Mistakes 
Ittgevsoll 


•  Mi 


I      DEC  3  -  la- 

MISTAKES 


OF 


INGERSOLL 


AS  SHOWN  BY 


PROF.    SWING,      J.  MONRO  GIBSON,  D.  D 
W.  H.  RYDER,  D.  D.,     RABBI  WISE, 
BROOKE  HERFORD,  D.  D., 
AND  OTHERS. 


INCLUDING  INGERSOLL'S  LECTURE 

ON   THE 

'•MISTAKES  OF  MOSES." 


EDITED    BY 

J.  B.  MCCLURE. 


CHICAGO: 

RHODES  &  McCLURE,  PUBLISHERS. 

1879. 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1879  by 

J.  B.  McClure  &  R.  S.  Rhodes, 

In  the  Office  of  the  Librarian  of  Congress,  at  Washington    D.  C. 


Stereotyped  and  Printed 
Ottawat  &  Company, 


Donohce  &  Henxebekry. 

Binder^ 


A  religious  laith  at  present  so  generally  pervades  the 
eivilized  world  that  it  seems  almost  amazing  that  any  one 
should  dare  speak  as  Mr.  Ingersoll  does  in  his  several  lec- 
tures about  the  Bible.  It  is  this  singularity,  no  doubt, 
rather  than  intrinsic  worth,  which  gives  any  significance 
that  may  attach  to  his  words.  That  the  Bible  is  in  the 
least  endangered  is  out  of  the  question.  It  is  too  late  now 
for  that.  The  words  herein  compiled  from  good  and  able 
men,  who  have  made  the  great  Book,  in  its  early  language, 
import  and  history,  a  careful  study  for  long  years,  will  show 
how  futile  are  Mr.  IngersolPs  efforts  in  parading  what  he 
calls  the  "  Mistakes  of  Moses,"  etc.  Indeed,  it  would  seem 
that,  possibly  Mr.  I.  is  guilty  of  a  mistaken  identity,  for  he 
is  severely  accused  of  false  assertions  and  misrepresentations 
concerning  the  real  Moses.  This  reminds  us  of  a  "  mis- 
take" which  was  made  on  a  certain  occasion  by  the  celebra- 
ted Archbishop  of  Dublin,  the  gifted  author  of  the  work  so 
widely  known,  entitled  "The  Study  of  Words."  He  was 
not  in  robust  health  at  the  time,  and  for  many  years  had 
been  apprehensive  of  paralysis.  At  a  dinner  in  Dublin, 
given  by  the  Lord  Lieutenant  of  Ireland,  his  grace  sat  on 
the  right  of  his  hostess,  the  Dutchess  of  Abercorn.  In  the 
midst  of  the  dinner  the  company  was  startled  by  seeing  the 

(3) 


4  PREFACE. 

Archbishop  rise  from  his  seat,  and  still  more  startled  to  hear 
him  exclaim  in  a  dismal  and  sepulchral  tone,  "  It  has  come! 
it  has  come! " 

"  What  has  come,  your  Grace? "  eagerly  cried  half  a  dozen 
voices  from  different  parts  of  the  table. 

"  What  I  have  been  expecting  for  twenty  years,"  solemnly 
answered  the  archbishop — "  a  stroke  of  paralysis.  I  have 
been  pinching  myself  for  the  last  twenty  minutes,  and  find 
myself  entirely  without  sensation." 

"Pardon  me,  my  dear  archbishop,"  said  the  duchess, 
looking  up  at  him  with  a  somewhat  quizzical  smile — "par- 
don me  for  contradicting  you,  but  it  is  I  that  you  have  been 
pinching!" 

Messrs.  Gibson,  Swing,  Eyder  and  Herford,  of  Chicago, 
and  Rabbi  Wise,  of  Cincinnati,  whose  replies  are  herein 
given,  are  too  well  known  as  scholars  and  divines,  to  require 
any  introduction  to  a  reading  public.  Their  words  are 
wi^e  and  timely,  and  are  put  on  record  in  this  form  to  show 
the  weakness  of  modern  infidelity  and  the  stability  of  Divine 
Truth. 

J.  B.  McCluee. 

Chicago,  April  22nd,  1879. 


PAGE 

Prof.  Swing's  Reply 7 

The  Lawyer  vs.  The  Philosopher  —  Ingersoll's  Pro- 
fessional Proclivities  in  Making  a  Part  Equal  to 
the  Whole 8 

Seven  Mistakes  of  Moses  Left  Oat! — Injustice  to 
Hebrew  History 10 

Swing  Puts  Himself  in  Ingersoll's  Place  and  At- 
tacks the  Seventeenth  Century — How  it  Works         13 

Ingersoll's  Narrowness  Shuts  Out  God,  Heaven  and 
Immortality — Infidel  Dogmatism      .         .         .         15 

In  the  World's  Great  Freedom  of  Choice,  Ingersoll 
is  Counted  Out 18 


Dr.  Ryder's  Reply 

Ingersoll's  Unfairness — Attributes  to  Moses  State- 
ments not  in  the  Bible 

His  Temporary  Insanity  occasioned  by  Heavy  Rains 
— Intellectually  Submerged  in  the  Deluge — Dam- 
aging Blunders — Ingersoll  up  the  Wrong  Moun- 
tain   

Top-heavy — Too  Broad  a  Structure  reared  on  a  Too 
Narrow  Base 

Ingersoll's  Inconsistency  , 

He  Has  No  Poetry  in  His  Soul ;  ergo,  etc. 

Additional  Misrepresentations       .... 

Dr.  Ryder  Propounds  a  Question     .... 

(5) 


21 


22 


24 

27 
29 
31 
32 
34 


6  CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Ingersoll  Admits  His  Sad  Need  of  Inspiration     .  35 
Ingersoll's  ''Religion  of  Humanity"  All  Right  Ex- 
cept the  Religion           ......  37 

Dr.  Ryder  Tells  a  Little  Story  for  the  sake  of  Illus- 
tration         39 

Dr.  Herford's  Reply 41 

The  Ingersoll  Paradox 42 

Ingersoll's  Exaggerations  and  False  Assertions         .  43 
Dr.  Herford's  Story  of  Moses,  with  an  Apt  Illustra- 
tion— The  Germinal  Power  of  the  Pentateuch    .  46 
The  Mosaic  Religion  of  Humanity           .         .         .49 

The  Jewish  Rabbi's  Reply 53 

Dr.  Gibson's  Reply 61 

Ingersoll  Betrays  His  Ignorance  ....  62 
Harmony  of  Science  and  Genesis  .  .  .  .63 
The   Harmony   of    Genesis   and    Science    Not   the 

Result  of  Guess-work,  but  of  Inspiration         .  67 

God 69 

Nature 70 

Man 72 

Woman 73 

Mistakes  Respecting  Labor  and  Death  Corrected     .  75 
The  Deluge  and  its  Difficulties — Not  Universal — 
Ararat  originally  a  District  (alas!  Ingersoll  calls 
it  a  High  Mountain) — Other  Deluges        .         .  76 
Faith  in  Jesus  Christ  the  Essential  Factor        .         .  80 
Candor  vs.   Injustice — Dr.  Gibson's  Pointed  Sum- 
mary            81 

What  Distinguished  Men  Say  of  the  Bible       .       85-96 

Ingersoll's  Lecture, 

Entitled  "The  Mistakes  of  Moses,"         .          .  97 


Cc  ^z  c£,  \     V££f£  7jc 


•KIHCETi 


'IIBOLOGIC 


• 


Mistakes  of  Ingersoll 


AS   SHOWN   BY 

PROF.  SWING,  |  J.  MONRO  GIBSON,  D.  D. 

W.  H.  RYDER,  D.  D.,  RABBI  WISE, 

BROOKE  HERFORD,  D.  D.,  And  others. 


PEOF.  SWING'S  EEPLY. 


This  discourse  is  not  spoken  regarding  the  man,  Robert 
G.  Ingersoll,  but  regarding  the  addresses  which  he  is  deliv- 
ering and  is  otherwise  publishing.  The  man  Ingersoll  is 
said  to  be,  in  his  private  life,  kind,  neighborly,  humane, 
and  in  many  ways  an  example  which  might  be  imitated 
with  great  profit  by  thousands  who  represent  themselves  as 
holding  the  Pagan  or  the  Christian  religion.  But,  were 
this  author  and  lecturer  a  mean,  wicked  man,  I  should  still 
be  bound  to  consider  his  thoughts  apart  from  the  thinker 
just  as  we  deal  with  Bacon's  ideas  apart  from  his  moral 
qualities,  and  the  politics  of  Alexander  Hamilton  apart 
from   the  infirmities  of  his  moral   sentiments.     The  intel- 

(7) 


8  MISTAKES  OF  INGERSOLL. 

lect  of  such  an  individual  as  the  one  before  us  is  a  thinking 
machine.  It  makes  a  survey  of  the  religious  landscape. 
Objects  strike  it  that  escape  you  and  me.  His  eyes  are  not 
those  of  a  preacher,  not  those  of  a  bishop,  nor  those  of  an 
evangelist  like  Mr.  Moody;  not  those  of  a  moralist  like 
Dymond  or  William  Penn,  nor  those  of  Theodore  Parker 
or  Emerson,  but  they  are  a  vision  purely  his  own,  and  our 
task  is  limited  to  the  inquiry  what  this  peculiar  sense  dis- 
covers in  our  wide  and  varied  world. 

i 
The   Lawyer  vs.  The   Philosopher — Ingersoll's   Professional 

Proclivities  in  Making  a  Part  equal    to  the  Whole  ! 

We  perceive  at  once  that  these  addresses  do  not  offer  us 
any  system  of  philosophy  for  woman,  or  child,  or  State,  and 
therefore  they  cannot  aspire  to  be  any  valuable  Mentor  to 
tell  each  young  Telemachus  how  to  live.  They  are  the 
speeches  of  a  lawyer  retained  by  one  client  of  a  large  case. 
Men  trained  in  a  profession  come  by  degrees  into  the  pro- 
fession's channel,  and  flow  only  in  the  one  direction,  and  al- 
ways between  the  same  banks.  The  master  of  a  learned 
profession  at  last  becomes  its  slave.  He  who  follows  faith- 
fully any  calling  wears  at  last  a  soul  of  that  calling's  shape. 
You  remember  the  death  scene  of  the  poor  old  schoolmas- 
ter. He  had  assembled  the  boys  and  girls  in  the  winter 
mornings  and  had  dismissed  them  winter  evenings  after 
sundown,  and  had  done  this  for  fifty  long  years.  One  win- 
ter Monday  he  did  not  appear.  Death  had  struck  his  old 
and  feeble  pulse;  but,  dying,  his  mind  followed  its  beauti- 
ful but  narrow  river-bed,  and  his  last  words  were:  "It  is 
growing  dark — the  school  is  dismissed — let  the  girls  pass 
out  first."  Yery  rarely  does  the  man  in  the  pulpit,  or  at 
the  bar,  or  in  statesmanship,  escape  this  molding  hand  of 
his  pursuit.     AYe  are  all  clay  in  the  hands  of  that  potter 


PROF.  SWING'S  REPLY.  9 

which  is  called  a  pursuit.  A  pursuit  is  seldom  an  ocean  of 
water;  it  is  more  commonly  a  canal.  But  if  there  be  a 
class  of  men  more  modified  than  others  in  language  and 
forms  of  speech,  the  lawyers  compose  such  a  class,  for  it  is 
never  their  business  to  present  both  sides.  It  is  their  espe- 
cial duty  so  to  arrange  a  part  of  the  facts  as  that  they  shall 
seem  to  be  the  whole  facts,  and  next  to  their  power  of  pre- 
senting a  cause  must  come  their  power  to  conceal  all  aspects 
unfavorable  to  their  purpose.  A  philosopher  must  see  and 
set  forth  at  once  both  sides  of  all  questions,  but  a  lawyer 
must  learn  to  see  the  one  side  of  a  case,  for  there  is  another 
man  expressly  employed  to  see  the  reverse  of  the  shield. 
But  few  of  us  are  philosophers.  When  we  wish  to  exhibit 
something,  we  instantly  cut*  off  all  light  except  that  which 
will  fall  upon  our  goods.  If  we  are  to  display  only  a  yard 
of  silk,  we  will  veil  the  sun  and  move  about  to  find  the 
right  position,  and  then  light  a  little  more  gas,  that  the 
fields,  and  hills,  and  heavens  may  all  withdraw,  and  permit 
us  to  see  the  fold  of  a  bride's  dress.  Thus  all  the  profes- 
sions, honored  by  being  called  learned,  do  more  or  less  cut 
off  the  light  from  all  things  except  the  fabric  that  is  being 
unfolded  by  their  skillful  fingers. 

Men  of  intense  emotional  power  like  Mr.  Ingersoll,  and 
men  who,  like  him,  have  hearts  as  full  of  colors  as  a  paint- 
er's shop,  are  wont,  beyond  common,  to  pour  their  passion 
upon  one  object  rather  than  diffuse  it  all  over  the  world. 
These  can  awaken,  and  entertain,  and  shake,  and  unsettle, 
but  then,  after  all  is  over,  we  all  must  seek  for  final  guides 
men  who  are  calmer  and  who  spread  gentler  tints  with  their 
brush.  I  am,  therefore,  of  the  opinion  that  none  of  us 
should  follow  anyone  man,  but  rather  all  men;  should  seek 
that  general  impression,  that  wide-reaching  common-sense, 
which  knows  little  of  ecstacy  and  little  of  despair.     These 


10  MISTAKES  OF  INGERSOLL. 

"  Addresses  "  under  notice  are  wonderful  concentrations  of 
wit,  and  fun,  and  tears,  and  logic,  but  concentrations  upon 
minor  points.  They  are  severe  upon  a  little  group  of  men, 
upon  literalists  and  old  Popes,  and  old  monks,  but  they  do 
not  weigh  and  measure  fully  the  religion  of  such  a  being  as 
Jesus  Christ,  nor  touch  the  ideas  and  actions  of  the  human 
race  away  from  these  fading  forms  of  human  nature. 


Seven  Mistakes  of   Moses  Left  out! —  Injustice  to  Hebrew 

History. 

These  addresses  do  injustice  to  the  Hebrew  history.  A 
lawyer  has  a  right  to  be  one-sided  and  narrow  when  he  is 
presenting  the  cause  of  his  client,  but  when  he  is  addressing 
a  public  upon  a  religious,  or  political,  or  social  question, 
narrowness  in  his  discourse  must  be  considered  an  infirmity, 
or  else  an  act  of  injustice.  These  speeches  betray  either 
unconscious  narrowness  or  willful  injustice.  But  Mr.  Inger- 
soll  is  the  embodiment  of  sincerity,  according  to  those  who 
enjoy  his  acquaintance,  and  therefore  we  must  conclude 
that  the  cast  of  his  mind  is  such  tlfat  it  is  led  hither  and 
thither  by  that  narrowness  which  belongs  no  more  to  a  high 
Calvinist  than  to  a  high  infidel.  If  the  lecture  upon 
"  Moses "  had  been  more  thoughtful,  it  would  have  con- 
fessed that  there  were  several  forms  of  the  man  "  Moses," — 
the  historic  "  Moses,"  the  Hebrew  "  Moses,"  and  the  Calvin- 
istic  "  Moses ; "  and  then,  after  this  concession,  he  might  have 
assailed  the  "  Calvinistic  Moses."  .... 
But  if  the  addresses  had  been  broad,  and  spoken  for  that 
larger  audience  called  humanity,  they  would  have  asked  us 
to  mark  the  mistakes  of  the  Moses  of  Hebrew  times  and  of 
common  history.  But  they  did  not  dream  of  this.  Stand- 
ing in  the  presence  of  one  of  the  grandest  figures  of  Egyp- 


PROF.  SWING'S  REPLY.  11 

tian  and  Hebrew  antiquity,  Mr.  Ingersoll  failed  to  see  this 
personage,  and  permitted  nothing  to  come  upon  his  field  of 
vision  except  those  sixteenth  century  theologians  who  dis- 
torted alike  the  mission  of  Moses  and  of  Christ,  and  even 
of  the  Almighty.  To  set  forth  the  mistakes  of  the  historic 
"Moses"  would  not  be  any  easy  task.  One  doing  this 
would  be  compelled  to  ask  us  to  mark  the  blunders  of  a 
leader  who  planned  freedom  for  slaves;  who  bore  complain- 
ings from  an  ignorant  people  until  he  won  the  fame  of  unu- 
sual meekness,  one  who  did  in  reality  what  infidels  only 
have  dreamed  of  doing — living  and  dying  for  the  people; 
the  mistakes  of  one  whose  ten  laws  are  still  the  fundamental 
ideas  of  a  State,  of  one  who  organized  a  nation  which  lived 
and  flourished  for  1,500  years;  the  mistakes  of  one  who 
divested  the  idea  of  Grod  of  bestiality  and  began  to  clothe  it 
with  the  notions  of  wisdom  and  justice,  and  even  tenderness; 
the  follies  of  one  who  established  industry  and  education, 
and  a  higher  form  of  religion,  and  gave  the  nation  holding 
these  virtues  such  an  impulse  that  in  the  hour  of  dissolving 
it  produced  a  Jesus  Christ  and  the  twelve  Apostles;  and 
thus  did  more  in  its  death  than  Atheism  could  achieve  in  all 
the  eons  of  geology.     Seven  mistakes  of  Moses  left  out! 

There  is,  it  is  true,  a  time  and  a  place  for  irony,  but  after 
it  has  done  its  work  amid  the  accidental  of  a  time  or  a  place, 
there  remains  yet  much  to  be  studied  by  the  sober  intellect 
and  loved  by  the  heart  which  really  cares  for  the  useful  and 
the  true.  It  is  essentially  a  small  matter  that  some  poetic 
mind,  some  Froissart  or  some  Herodotus,  came  along  per- 
haps after  the  reigns  of  David  and  Solomon,  and  gathered  up 
all  the  truths  of  old  Hebrew  tradition,  and  all  the  legends, 
too,  and  wove  them  together,  for  out  of  such  entanglements 
the  essential  ideas  generally  rise  up  just  as  noble  pine  trees 
at  last  rise  up  above  the  brambles  and  thickets  at  their  base, 


12  MISTAKES  OF  INGERSOLL. 

and  evermore  stand  in  the  full  presence  of  rain,  and  air,  and 
sun.  Above  the  brambles  and  thorn  of  legend,  at  which 
the  narrow  eye  may  laugh,  there  rises  up  from  the  Mosaic 
soil  a  growth  of  moral  truth  that  catches  at  last  full  sun- 
shine  and  full  breeze;  a  growth  that  will  long  make  a  good 
shadow  for  the  graves  of  Christian  and  infidel  beneath. 
The  errors  of  legend  are  so  unimportant  that  even  a  Divine 
Book  may  carry  them. 

It  will  thus  appear  that  the  method  of  the  addresses  is 
very  defective.  It  is  not  a  wide  survey  of  a  two-thousand- 
year  period  in  human  civilization,  a  period  when  the  He- 
brews were  making  imperishable  the  good  of  the  Egyptians 
who  were  dying  from  vices  and  despotism,  but  is  only  the 
ramble  of  a  satirist  having  a  sharp  eye  for  defects  and  a  most 
ready  tongue.  All  the  by-gone  periods  may  be  passed  over 
in  two  manners.  We  may  go  forth  for  our  laughter  or  foi 
our  pensi  veil  ess  and  wisdom.  Juvenal  saw  old  Borne  full 
of  dissolute  men  and  women.  Virgil  saw  it  full  of  litera- 
ture. Tacitus  found  it  not  destitute  of  patriots  and  heroes; 
and  when  Juvenal  found  the  husbands  all  debauchees,  and 
the  wives  all  hypocrites,  there  the  most  calm  and  elegant 
historians  found  the  most  excellent  Agricola,  and  found  a 
wife  of  spotless  fame  in  the  daughter  Domitia.  Thus  in 
the  very  generations  in  which  the  lampoons  of  Juvenal 
found  only  vice,  behold  we  see  beauty  and  virtue  in  full 
bloom  around  the  homes  of  Tacitus,  and  Agricola,  and 
Pliny.  Thus  all  the  fields  of  human  thought  lie  open  to 
the  invasion  of  those  who  wish  to  mock,  and  of  those  who 
wish  to  admire.  And  beyond  doubt  when  Mr.  Ingersoll 
shall  have  uttered  his  last  thought  over  the  Mistakes  of 
Moses,  some  other  form  of  intellect  could  glean  in  the  same 
field,  and  leave  covered  with  the  truths  of  Moses,  a  nobler 
and  larger  tablet. 


PROF.  SWING'S  REPLY.  13 

Swing  Puts  Himself  in  Ingersoll's  Place  and  Attacks   the 
Seventeenth  Century.— How  it  Works ! 

Permit  me  now,  in  imitation  of  the  style  of  these  addresses, 
to  ask  you  to  look  at  the  seventeenth  century:  Why,  it  all 
drips  in  blood!  Horror  upon  horrors !  The  King  of  Persia 
put  to  death  some  of  the  Royal  family  and  put  out  the  eyes 
of  all  the  rest — even  the  eyes  of  infants.  Russia  begins  her 
cruel  oppression  of  Poland.  Prussia,  the  hope  of  Europe, 
is  desolated,  by  war,  which  never  lifted  its  black  cloud  for 
thirty  years,  in  this  wretched  century  came  the  massacre 
of  Prague  and  the  forcible  banishment  of  30,000  Protestant 
families.  Allowing  five  persons  to  a  family,  it  will  thus  ap- 
pear that  150,000  were  driven  from  their  homes  and  country. 
Further  south,  in  France,  a  few  years  before,  700,000  Pro- 
testants had  been  murdered  in  twenty-four  hours.  After- 
ward came  the  licentious  court  of  Louis  XIY.;  while  over 
in  England  noble  men  and  women  were  being  beheaded  or 
otherwise  slain  in  dreadful  numbers.  The  beautiful  Queen 
Mary  is  beheaded  just  as  the  century  begins,  and  Essex  is 
beheaded  in  its  full  opening.  And  in  its  close  France  re- 
enters the  scene,  revokes  the  edict  of  Nantes,  and  sends  into 
exile  800,000  of  her  best  citizens. 

Thus  dragged  along  the  seventeenth  century,  as  it  would 
seem,  bleeding,  and  weeping,  and  gasping  in  perpetual 
dying.  "What  a  picture!  Amazing  indeed,  but  narrow  and 
false!  I  have  been  thinking  only  of  the  "mistakes"  of  a 
time.  Just  look  at  that  century  again  with  a  wider  survey 
and  a  happier  heart,  and  lo !  we  see  in  it  a  matchless  line 
of  immortal  worthies.  There  flourished  Gustavus,  laying 
the  foundations  of  our  liberty;  there  lived  Grotius,  writing 
down  the  holiest  principles  of  duty ;  there  we  see  Galileo 
inventing  the  telescope,  and  beholding  the  starry  sky;  there 


14  MISTAKES  OF  IXGERSOLL. 

sits  Kepler  finding  the  highest  laws  of  astronomy;  near 
these  are  the  French  preachers,  Bossnet,  Fenelon,  and  Mas- 
silon,  whose  fame  has  not  been  equaled;  there,  too,  Pascal 
and  Corneille.  But  this  is  not  all.  It  is  not  one-third  the 
splendor  of  that  one  epoch,  for,  cross  the  Channel,  and 
behold  you  meet  Shakspeare,  and  Lord  Bacon,  and  Milton, 
and  Locke,  and  while  these  divine  minds  are  composing 
their  books,  Cromwell  is  overthrowing  despots,  and  a 
Republic  springs  up  as  by  enchantment.  Thus  the  seven- 
teenth century,  which  awhile  ago  seemed  only  a  period  that 
a  kind  heart  might  wish  stricken  from  history,  now  comes 
back  to  us  as  the  sublime  dawn  of  poetry,  and  science,  and 
eloquence,  and  liberty. 

The  truth  is  we  must  move  through  the  present  and  the 
past  with  both  eyes  wide  open,  and  with  a  mind  willing  to 
know  all  and  to  draw  a  conclusion  from  the  whole  combined 
cloud  of  witnesses.  The  author  of  the  addresses  does  not 
do  this.  He  does  not  make  a  wide  survey  nor  draw  conclu- 
sions from  widely  scattered  facts;  and  hence,  after  he  has 
spoken  about  the  horrors  of  the  Mosaic  age,  or  of  the  church 
there  remains  that  age  or  that  church  emptying  rich  treas- 
ures into  the  general  civilization,  purifying  the  barbarous 
ages,  awaking  the  intellect,  stimulating  the  arts,  inspiring 
good  works,  elevating  the  life  of  the  living,  by  setting  before 
man  a  God  and  a  future  existence.  Our  Christianity  has  a 
Hebrew  origin.  The  sermon  on  the  Mount  was  begun  by 
Moses. 

The  eloquence  of  Mr.  Ingersoll  is  much  like  the  art  of 
Hogarth  or  John  Leech, — an  acute,  and  witty,  and  interest- 
ing art,  but  very  limited  in  its  range.  Hogarth  was  with- 
out a  rival  in  his  ability  to  picture  the  "  mistakes"  of  mar- 
riage, and  of  a  "  Rake's  Progress,"  the  peculiarity  of  "  Beer 
Lane"  and   "  Gin  Lane";  and  his  art  was  legitimate  in  its 


PEOF.  SWING'S  REPLY.  15 

field,  but  its  field  was  narrow,  and  took  no  notice  of  the 
eternal  beauty  of  things  as  painted  by  Rubens  or  Raphael. 
After  Hogarth  had  said  all  he  could  see  and  believe  about 
marriage,  there  stood  the  holy  relation  in  its  historic  great- 
ness, tilling  millions  of  homes  with  its  peace  and  friend- 
ship, notwithstanding  the  mirth-provoking  pencil.  Thus 
the  ideas  of  "Moses,"  and  "  Church,"  and  "Heaven,"  and 
"  God"  lie  before  Mr.  Ingersoll  to  be  pictured  by  his  skill- 
ful derision,  but  after  the  artist  has  drawn  his  little  Puritanic 
Hebrew  and  his  absurd  Heaven,  and  has  painted  his  little 
gods,  and  has  limned  his  own  Papal  Heaven  and  Hell, 
another  scene  opens  and  there  untarnished  are  the  deep 
things  of  right  and  wrong,  the  immortal  hopes  of  man,  and 
a  Heavenly  Father  which  cannot  be  placed  upon  a  jester's 
canvas. 

John  Leech  found  the  weak  points  in  all  English  high 
and  low  life.  The  fashions,  and  sports,  and  entertainments, 
and  the  current  politics,  underwent  for  a  generation  the  tor- 
ture of  his  pictures,  his  sketches,  his  cartoons,  but  the 
moment  the  laugh  had  ended,  the  homes  of  England,  the 
happy  social  life  of  rich  and  poor,  the  learning  and  wisdom 
of  her  statesmen  were  back  in  their  place  just  as  the  sun  is 
in  his  place  after  a  noisy  thunderstorm  has  passed  by. 

Ingersoll's  Narrowness  Shuts  out  God,  Heaven  and  Immor- 
tality— Infidel   Dogmatism. 
This  narrowness  of  survey  which  marks   Mr.  Ingersoll's 
estimate  of  the  Hebrew  period  and  of  the  human  Church, 
follows  him  in  his  thoughts  about  another  life  and  the  exist- 
ence of  God.     He  denies  that  any  regard  whatever  should 
be  paid  to   a  second  life.     Heaven  deserves   no   consider- 
ation at  our  hands.     He  says  in  his  lecture  on   the  Gods: 
"  Reason,    observation    and    experience    have    taught    us 
2 


16  MISTAKES  OF  INGERSOLL. 

that  happiness  is  the  only  good;  that  the  time  to  be  happy 
is  now,  and  the  way  to  be  happy  is  to  make  others  so.  This 
is  enough  for  us.  In  this  belief  we  are  content  to  live  and 
die."  Such  assertions  as  these  no  broadly-reaching  mind 
could  make,  for  the  broad  mind,  not  knowing  but  that  there 
maybe  a  second  life,  having  no  positive  information  on  that 
point,  is  bound  to  admit  all  that  uncertainty,  and  that  hope 
is  a  most  lawful  element  in  that  strange  mingling  which 
makes  up  the  soul.  As  Mr.  Ingersoll  does  not  know  whence 
man  came,  so  he  knows  not  whither  he  goes,  and  therefore 
he  must  himself  stand  and  permit  others  to  stand  in  the 
presence  of  death  as  in  the  presence  of  a  great  mystery  that, 
at  least,  should  silence  all  dogmatism  of  priest  or  infidel. 
The  logic  of  the  addresses  may  be  fitted  for  the  common 
jury,  but  they  are  too  rude  for  man  who  is  weeping  his 
way  along  between  birth  and  death. 

In  some  better  hour  the  lawyer  forgets  his  petit  jury  and 
addresses  the  human  soul.  On  the  title  page  of  a  recent 
volume  he  says  in  substance  that:  "  The  dream  of  immor- 
tal life  has  always  existed  in  the  heart  of  man,  and  will 
remain  there  in  all  its  matchless  charms,  born  not  of  any 
book  or  creed,  but  out  of  human  affection;"  and  being  not 
born  of  reason  and  sense,  he  can  but  reject  its  hope;  he  is 
personally  above  being  molded  in  thought,  or  action,  by 
such  a  fable  of  the  heart.  In  calling  such  a  dream  a  fable, 
he  is  guilty  of  that  very  dogmatism  which  he  so  hates  in 
Calvin  and  Edwards,  for  if  Calvin  was  too  certain  that  he 
knew  God's  will,  Mr.  Ingersoll  is  too  certain  that  he  knows 
God  not  to  exist.  It  often  happens  that  the  dogmatism 
of  the  bigot  must  await  its  exact  parallel  in  the  dogmatism 
of  the  atheist.  The  ideas  of  a  future  life  and  a  God  are 
thus  in  these  addresses  rudely  set  aside  as  though  this 
author  had  shown  the  real  origin  and  destiny  of  the  Uni- 
verse, and  had  found  out  the  secret  of  the  grave. 


PROF.  SWING'S  REPLY.  17 

He  would  pay  no  attention  to  tlie  idea  of  God.  He  would 
not  be  guilty  of  any  worship  in  this  life.  He  says:  "  If 
by  any  possibility  the  existence  of  a  power  superior  to  and 
independent  of  nature  shall  be  demonstrated,  there  will  be 
time  enough  to  kneel.     Until  then  let  us  stand  erect." 

In  such  language  we  find  only  a  perfect  overthrow  of  the 
method  of  the  human  soul ;  for  the  soul  has  never  dared 
wait  for  any  such  certainty  in  <<my  of  the  paths  before  it.  It 
has  always  been  compelled  to  build  up  before  itself  the 
largest  possible  motives  and  hopes,  and  then  live  for  them 
and  abide  the  consequences.  It  is  wonderful  that  a  man 
who  will  pluck  a  violet  and  draw  delight  from  its  tender 
color  and  still  more  delicate  perfume,  will  sternly  command 
the  human  race  not  to  hold  in  its  hands  any  flower  of  im- 
mortality, lest  by  chance  its  leaves  may  at  last  wither.  If 
this  idea  of  a  future  life  should  at  last  fail,  which  seems  im- 
possible, the  human  heart  will  be  all  the  purer  and  happier 
from  having  held  all  through  these  years  a  lily  so  sweet  and 
so  white. 

Logic  cannot  make  such  short  work  of  the  religious  sen- 
timents. Mr.  Ingersoll  says:  "If  you  can  ever  find  a  God, 
just  let  me  know,  and  I  shall  kneel.  Until  then  I  shall 
stand  erect."  What  injustice  to  that  delicate  form  of  rea- 
son, which  has  moved  the  world  for  perhaps  10,000  years! 
We  do  not  propose  to  find  God  or  a  future  life.  What  the 
world  has. found  long  since  is  the  deep  hope  in  a  God,  and 
the  measureless  hope  that  the  dying  loved  ones  of  this  world 
will  meet  in  a  land  that  is  better.  Nobody  has  come  to  the 
human  race  to  let  it  know  that  a  God  has  been  found,  but 
many  have  come  to  it  saying:  "My  dear  children,  let  us 
trust  that  all  this  matchless  universe  came  from  a  Creator, 
and  that  from  him  we  also  came."  So  many  and  so  holy 
were  these  voices,  and  so  responsive  was  the  heart,  that  upon 


13  MISTAKES  OF  INGERSOLL. 

this  trust  the  living  and  the  dying  have  knelt  and  have  told 
their  longings  to  the  Invisible.  The  human  race  has  not 
been  haughty.  It  has  been  willing  to  kneel.  Its  heart  has 
never  been  stone,  nor  its  knees  brass.  It  has  stood  erect  in 
battle  where  liberty  was  to  be  won ;  it  has  been  as  erect  as  an 
infidel  when  a  bosom  was  to  be  bared  for  arrows  or  bullets, 
or  when  the  neck  was  to  be  unclothed  for  the  fatal  ax,  but 
in  moments  of  hope  and  longing  it  has  bent  willingly  in 
hope  and  prayer.  The  advice  of  the  Addresses  not  to  kneel 
until  you  have  reached  and  handled  the  Creator,  is  advice 
that  civilization  has  always  spurned,  for  it  has  woven  all  its 
gorgeous  fabrics  out  of  delicate  probabilities, — gossamer 
threads  spun  by  the  heart.  Fame,  and  learning,  and  art, 
and  happiness  are  all  simple  possibilities  before  each  youth. 
He  does  not  dare  say,  Make  me  sure  of  results,  and  I  will 
gird  myself  for  the  present.  He  casts  himself  upon  the  bet- 
ter of  two  possibilities,  and  is  borne  along  toward  an  un- 
known end.  Thus  has  the  human  race  dealt  with  the  inti- 
mations of  religion.  It  has  cast  itself  upon  the  better  hope, 
and,  being  at  perfect  liberty  to  espouse  Atheism,  has  always 
repudiated  it  as  being  a  paralysis  of  the  soul,  and  a  jjerfect 
reversal  of  the  common  logic  of  society. 

In  the  World's  Great  Freedom  of  Choice,  Ingersoll  is  Coun- 
ted out! 

The  world  has  always  been  perfectly  free  to  use  the  form 
of  reasoning  which  Mr.  Ingersoll  suggests.  No  Westmin- 
ster Assembly,  no  Calvin  compelled  the  human  family 
from  Old  Egypt  to  Greece  to  think  the  universe  had  a 
Creator.  The  world  has  always  been  free  to  suppose  that 
such  seasons  as  day  and  night  and  spring  and  summer,  such 
creatures  as  the  nightingale  and  man,  such  a  star  as  the  sun, 
all  came  from  mud  and  water  and  fire,  mingling  of  their 


PROF.  SWING'S  REPLY.  19 

own  accord;  but  the  world  has  had  no  wide  use  for  such 
conclusions.  Of  its  own  free  choice,  it  has  avoided  Atheism, 
and  has  never  made  up  anywhere  a  civilization  without  dis- 
carding the  idea  of  waiting  for  a  demonstration,  and  with- 
out espousing  the  idea  that  all  noble  society  reposes  upon 
lofty  hopes.  Out  of  beautiful  possibilities  the  soul's  gar- 
ments are  woven. 

It  thus  appears  that  the  Addresses  are  defective  as  guides 
for  any  man's  life  or  death.  They  constitute  a  bill  of  ex- 
ceptions against  certain  hard  rulings  in  some  local  and  igno- 
rant courts,  but  as  pleadings  in  the  great  tribunal  where  the 
whole  human  family  stands  assembled,  to  get  the  wisest 
decisions  about  duty  and  happiness,  and  the  possibility  of 
there  being  a  God  and  a  second  life,  the  possible  value  of  a 
hope  for  the  dying — they  each  and  all  fall  far  short.  They 
see  only  the  religion  of  some  fanatic,  and  think  it  the  religion 
of  Jesus  or  of  mankind.  They  see  a  God  damning  honest 
men,  and  conclude  that  is  what  is  meant  by  Jehovah.  The}^ 
see  a  Heaven  with  some  little  sect  in  the  midst  of  it,  and 
speak  as  though  they  were  what  is  meant  by  the  immortality 
of  man.  They  note  the  follies  of  the  Puritans  and  Papists, 
and  infer  that  if  there  were  no  religion  in  the  world,  there 
would  be  no  bad  judgment  or  bad  passions.  They  fail,  too, 
to  mark  the  delicacy  of  man's  practical  logic,  which  is  not 
iron-like,  waiting  for  the  absolute  end  of  all  doubt,  but  which 
is  bending  and  hopeful,  and  stands  ready  forever  to  found 
immense  motives,  and  society,  and  church,  and  homes  upon 
the  greater  and  better  of  two  probabilities  that  lie  within  this 
world  of  cloud.  They  assert  the  adequacy  of  earthly  happi- 
ness as  an  end  of  being,  and  fail  to  mark  that  earthly  hap- 
piness has  always  depended  upon  high  morals,  and  father, 
and  mother,  and  child,  and  social  life,  and  all  mental  de- 
velopment have  found  their  full  meaning,  until  a  warm  and 


20  MISTAKES  OF  1XGERSOLL. 

broad  religion  lias  shed  its  cheering  light.  The  human  race 
cannot  find  its  supreme  good  in  having  a  few  acres  of  ground, 
and  in  seeing  the  grass  grow,  and  in  hearing  the  birds  sing. 
These  make  some  days  delightful  indeed,  but  man,  with  his 
retinue  of  art,  and  statesmanship,  and  morals,  and  tempta- 
tions, and  virtues,  and  joys,  and  sorrows,  and  partings,  and 
death,  demands  the  assumption  of  a  God,  and  the  expecta- 
tions of  a  resurrection  from  the  dust.  Under  such  a  temple 
as  society,  the  foundation  must  be  deep. 

To  those  who  read  or  hear  these  addresses  of  Mr.  Inger- 
soll,  let  me  say:  Hear  them,  read  them  if  you  wish,  for  they 
will  show  you  what  a  sad  caricature  of  Christianity  was  that 
which  came  down  to  us  from  the  Dark  Ages ;  but,  having 
thus  been  taught  by  an  enemy,  then  dismiss  the  laughter, 
and  look  at  religion  in  the  widest  forms  of  its  doctrine  and 
experience.  We  are  now  warned  daily  not  to  follow  parti- 
sans in  politics,  because  they  will  eclipse  a  country  by  a 
little  chair  in  office — they  will  make  a  village  outweigh  a 
continent.  These  addresses  of  a  talented  lawyer  warn  us 
equally  against  trusting  the  partisans  in  religion — the  dim- 
eyed  zeal  which  makes  a  Deity  as  small  as  their  own  hearts, 
a  Bible  as  cold  and  as  hard  as  adamant;  but  now,  having 
been  taught  to  shun  partisans  in  politics  and  in  Christi- 
anity, let  us  learn  to  resist  one  more  form  of  partisan — the 
partisan  of  an  atheism  and  a  hopeless  grave.  Let  us  at 
times  laugh  with  him,  let  us  admire  his  acuteness,  let  us 
confess  the  honesty  of  his  life,  but  for  our  guides  or  ideas 
in  the  world  spiritual  let  us  seek  some  mountain  of  thought 
where  the  survey  is  broader,  and  tenderer,  and  more  just, 
from  which  height  no  good  lies  concealed;  but  looking  from 
which  we  can  see  the  great  landscape  of  the  soul,  some  of 
it  bathed  in  light,  some  of  it  lying  in  shadow,  but  all  of  it 
instructive  and  full  of  impressiveness. 


DR.  RYDER'S  REPLY. 


DE.   ETDEE'S  EEPLT. 


In  the  commencement  of  this  review  of  Mr.  Ingersoll's 
lecture  upon  "The  Mistakes  of  Moses,"  I  wish  two  things 
distinctly  understood:  First,  that  my  controversy  is  not 
with  the  man,  but  with  his  address;  and,  second,  that  he 
has  the  same  right  to  advocate  his  views  as  I  have  to  advo- 
cate mine.  On  the  question  of  religious  liberty  we  are  as 
one. 

Furthermore,  I  do  not  wonder  that  certain  minds,  having 
passed  through  peculiar  experiences,  become  thoroughly 
disgusted  with  particular  forms  of  theological  thought.  My 
only  surprise  is  that  more  are  not.  Such  material  ideas  of 
the  Deity  as  are  sometimes  put  forth  in  the  name  of  Chris- 
tianity; such  offensive  literalizing  as  is  sometimes  applied 
to  the  future  life,  and  such  thoroughly  untenable  positions 
as  are  sometimes  taken  as  to  what  the  Scriptures  actually 
are,  has  long  been  a  fruitful  cause  of  infidelity,  and  will 
continue  to  be  so  as  long  as  they  receive  the  indorsement  of 
any  branch  of  the  Christian  Church. 

But  intensity  of  conviction  may  degenerate  into  preju- 
dice, and  this  prejudice  practically  unfits  one  to  discuss  the 
subject  to  which  it  relates.  From  what  the  distinguished 
lecturer  says  of  himself,  of  his  determination  in  every  ad- 
dress he  makes,  no  matter  what  the  topic,  to  denounce  cer- 
tain views,  and  from  the  specimen  of  his  work  now  brought 


22  MISTAKES  OF  IXGERSOLL. 

under  review,  I  conclude  that  Col.  Ingersoll  occupies  just 
this  position. 

While,  t'.en,  the  right  to  speak  one's  honest  thought  is 
thus  frankly  conceded,  and  the  provocation  to  employ  strong 
language  in  reference  to  certain  theological  opinions  is  also 
conceded,  it  will  be  admitted  by  all  candid  minds  that  cer- 
tain subjects  from  their  very  nature,  and  from  interest  which 
they  involve,  are  to  be  treated  with  seriousness  and  fairness. 
If  not  so  treated,  the  influence  of  the  discussion  is  almost 
certain  to  be  harmful.  The  lecture  under  notice,  though 
nominally  on  the  errors  of  a  particular  character  in  the  Old 
Testament,  is  virtually  an  assault  upon  all  revealed  religion, 
and  especially  that  contained  in  the  Bible. 

Ingersoll's  Unfairness — Attributes  to  Moses  Statements 
not  in  the   Bible. 

Now,  my  first  position  is  this:  Whoever  publicly  attacks 
the  sacred  books  of  the  Christian  world,  and  attempts  to 
destroy  faith  in  them,  should  treat  the  subject  fairly.  I  re- 
gret to  say  that  the  lecture  does  not  seem  to  me  so  to  treat 
its  great  theme,  but  is,  on  the  contrary,  a  conspicuous  illus- 
tration of  prejudice  and  unfairness.  No  small  portion  of 
the  lecture  is  unworthy  a  reply.  There  is  nothing  to  reply 
to.  Of  fair  argument  there  is  a  lamentable  lack, — no  incon- 
siderable portion  of  the  time  seems  to  have  been  spent  in 
knocking  over  a  man  of  straw  of  his  own  manufacture.  If 
his  lecture  be  regarded  simply  as  an  entertainment,  it  is  a 
success,  for  the  Colonel  knows  how  to  amuse  an  audience  as 
well  as  the  best;  but  if  it  were  intended  to  be  a  fair  and 
able  discussion  of  an  important  subject,  it  is  not  simply  a 
failure,  but  a  failure  so  obvious  as  to  leave  no  room  for  any 
other  opinion.  In  proof  of  my  statement  that  the  lecture 
does  not  treat  the  topic  which  it  professes  to  discuss  fairly, 
I  oiler  these  specimens  as  evidence: 


DR.  RYDER'S  REPLY.  23 

The  first  specimen  is:  Attributing  to  Moses  language 
and  statements  not  to  be  found  in  any  of  his  writings. 
Speaking  of  Moses,  he  sa}Ts:  "  The  gentleman  who  wrote  it 
(Genesis)  begins  by  telling  us  that  God  made  it  (the  world) 
out  of  nothing."  And  then  he  proceeds  to  ridicule  the  idea. 
But  Moses  says  neither  that  nor  anything  like  it.  The 
lecturer  thus  misrepresents  the  very  first  sentence  in  the 
Pentateuch.  What  Moses  says  is,  that  "In  the  beginning 
God  created  the  heavens  and  the  earth."  What  he  created 
them  out  of,  or  when  "in  the  beginning"  was,  he  does  not 
say.  The  simple  thought  is  that  the  heavens  and  the  earth 
were  not  self-evolved,  but  were  created  by  the  Omnipotent 
Jehovah. 

"  You  recollect,"  he  says,  "  that  the  gods  came  down  and 
made  love  to  the  daughters  of  men,"  etc.  Where  does  Moses 
say  that?  Plenty  of  that  kind  of  talk  is  Grecian  and  Eoman 
mythology,  but  what  has  that  to  do  with  "The  Mistakes  of 
Moses? "  "  They  built  a  tower  (Babel)  to  reach  the  heavens 
and  climb  into  the  abodes  of  the  gods."  Another  of  the 
Colonel's  mistakes.  The  Tower  of  Babel  was  not  built  for 
any  such  purpose.  From  the  frequent  references  of  this 
kind  to  the  gods  in  connection  with  the  religion  of  Moses, 
it  looks  as  if  the  lecturer  was  not  aware  that  the  J  ews  were 
not  particularly  in  favor  of  idolatry.  Again  he  says: 
"  There  is  not  one  word  in  the  Old  Testament  about  woman 
except  words  of  shame  and  humiliation.  It  did  not  take 
the  pains  to  record  the  death  of  the  mother  of  us  all.  I  have 
no  respect  for  any  book  that  does  not  treat  woman  as  the 
equal  of  man." 

It  is  true  that  Moses  does  not  record  the  death  "  of  the 
mother  of  us  all; "  but  it  is  also  true  that  the  first  account 
of  the  burial  of  any  person  in  the  book  of  Genesis  is  that 
of  a  woman,  Sarah,  the  wife  of  Abraham.     Moses  simply 


04  MISTAKES  OF  INGERSOLL. 

says  of  Adam:  "The  father  of  us  all,"  "And  he  died;" 
and  in  a  similar  summary  manner  are  all  the  other  men  dis- 
posed of;  but  when  it  comes  to  this  woman  Sarah,  a  special 
lot  has  to  be  purchased  for  her,  and  secured  to  the  family, 
so  that  her  remains  might  not  be  disturbed;  and  even  now 
in  remembrance  of  the  cave  of  the  field  in  which  she  was 
buried,  a  certain  part  of  our  modern  cemeteries  is  called 
Machpelah.  By  the  side  of  this  fact  how  does  the  declara- 
tion look  that  "  there  is  not  one  word  in  the  Old  Testament 
about  women,  except  words  of  shame  and  humiliation?" 
Suppose  I  turn  the  tables  upon  the  lecturer,  and  say,  I  have 
no  respect  for  any  book  that  does  not  treat  man  as  the  equal 
of  woman.  My  words,  if  applied  to  the  Bible,  would  be 
hardly  less  libelous  than  his. 

His    Temporary    Insanity    Occasioned   by    Heavy    Rains — 
Intellectually   Submerged   in   the    Deluge — Damaging 

Blunders— Ingersoll  up  the  Wrong  Mountain. 
My  second  specification  is  that  he  not  only  makes  Moses 
say  what  he  does  not  say,  but  he  frequently  misrepresents 
what  he  does  say.  I  name  these  particulars:  First,  in  speak- 
i  ng  of  the  flood,  he  gives  the  impression  that,  according  to 
the  Scriptural  account,  all  the  water  that  covered  the  earth 
and  inundated  it  came  out  of  the  clouds  in  the  form  of  rain, 
lie  says:  "And  then  it  began  to  rain,  and  it  kept  on  rain- 
ing until  the  water  went  twenty- nine  feet  over  the  highest 
mountains.  How  deep  were  these  waters?  About  five  and 
a  half  miles.  How  long  did  it  rain?  Forty  days.  How 
much  did  it  have  to  rain  a  day?  About  800  feet."  Now 
what  are  the  facts  ?  In  the  verse  which  precedes  the  one 
which  says,  "And  the  rain  was  upon  the  earth  forty  days  and 
forty  nights,"  we  have  this  record,— Gen.,  vii.,  ii. — "  In  the 
000th  year  of  Noah's  life,  in  the  second  month,  the  17th  day  of 


DR.  RYDER'S  REPLY.  25 

the  month,  the  same  day  were  all  the  fountains  of  the  great 
deep  broken  up,  and  the  windows  of  heaven  were  opened." 
Why  did  not  the  lecturer  mention  this  statement  of  the 
"  breaking  up  of  the  fountains  of  the  great  deep,"  which  is 
generally  supposed  to  refer  to  the  upheaval  or  subsidance  of 
some  large  body  or  bodies  of  land,  perhaps  to  portions  of 
this  western  continent,  and  is  considered  to  have  been  the 
principal  cause  of  the  deluge?  Why  omit  the  supposed 
principal  cause  of  the  deluge,  unless  it  was  his  purpose  to 
make  out  a  case  without  regard  to  the  facts? 

Furthermore,  what  authority  has  he  for  saying  that  the 
ark  rested  on  the  top  of  a  mountain  seventeen  thousand  feet 
high,  and  that  the  water  upon  the  earth  was  "  live  and  a 
half  miles  deep?  "  Has  he  committed  the  ignorant  blunder 
of  confounding  Agri-Dagh  with  the  hilly  district  to  which 
the  name  was  formerly  applied?  The  lofty  peak  that  now 
bears  the  name  of  Ararat  has  no  such  designation  in  Bib- 
lical history,  and  it  is  the  name  given  to  it  in  compara- 
tively modern  times.  The  Bible  record  is:  ''Fifteen  cubits 
upwards  did  the  waters  prevail."  The  Hebrew  cubit  is 
about  twenty- two  inches.  If  we  may  trust  the  conclusions 
of  science,  deluges  have  been  no  unusual  events  in  the  his- 
tory of  this  globe.  Most  of  the  land,  if  not  all  of  it,  no 
matter  how  high  at  present,  has  been  at  some  time  sub- 
merged. Whatever  one  may  think  about  the  accuracy  of 
the  narrative  in  reference  to  the  building  of  the  ark  and  the 
uses  to  which  it  was  put,  there  is  certainly  no  physical 
improbability  in  the  statement  that  that  part  of  the  earth 
which  was  then  above  water  was  thoroughly  inundated. 

Again,  the  gentleman  makes  merry  over  what  he  calls  the 
"  rib  story,"  and  imagines  two  persons  before  the  bar  of 
God,  one  believing  the  "  rib  story  "  and  the  other  denying 
it.     The  believer  of  it  is  accepted  by  the  Judge  as  belonging 


26  MISTAKES  OF  INGERSOLL. 

in  Heaven,  and  the  denier  of  it  as  belonging  in  Hell.  And 
this  he  puts  before  the  public  as  Bible  doctrine — as  if  any 
man  of  common  sense,  whether  Jew  or  Gentile,  ever  defended 
so  ridiculous  a  theory.  As  a  further  specimen  of  this  unfair- 
ness, I  present  you  this:  "  Do  you  believe  the  real  God — 
if  there  is  one — ever  killed  a  man  for  making  hair  oil? 
And  yet  you  find  in  the  Pentateuch  that  God  gave  Moses  a 
receipt  for  making  hair  oil  to  grease  Aaron's  beard;  and 
said  if  anybody  made  the  same  hair  oil  he  would  be  killed." 
There  could  hardly  be  written  a  more  complete  misrepre- 
sentation and  perfect  caricature  of  the  whole  subject  than 
this.  The  reference  in  Scripture  is  to  an  anointing  oil,  to  be 
applied,  not  simply  to  the  persons  of  the  priests,  but  to  the 
sacred  vessels  as  well;  and,  thus  anointed,  they  were  set 
apart  for  what  they  regarded  as  holy  uses.  But  if  this  cus- 
tom which  Mr.  Ingersoll  seeks  to  hold  up  to  ridicule,  was 
simply  Jewish,  there  would  be  some  show  or  plausibility  for 
talking  about  it  as  he  does;  but  he  has  not  even  that  to  jus- 
tify his  attack.  For  this  custom  of  using  anointing  oils  in 
connection  with  religious  services,  and  sacred  persons,  and 
utensils,  was  common  among  the  idolatrous  nations,  and 
even  conspicuous  among  the  rites  of  the  Romans.  And 
even  now  one  often  meets  with  the  spirit  of  the  same  cus- 
tom. I  do  not  know  whether  the  Colonel  is  a  member  of 
the  Masonic  fraternity,  but  he  must  have  seen  representa- 
tives of  that  ancient  Order  pour  out  anointing  oil  upon  the 
corner-stone  of  some  building  which  they  were  engaged  in 
laying.  Why  not  ridicule  that,  and  why  not  also  ridicule 
the  beautiful  custom  of  that  Order  of  dropping  upon  the 
uncovered  coffin  of  a  deceased  member  the  little  sprigs  of 
evergreen  that  the  brethren  bear  in  their  hands  as  they 
march  around  bis  open  grave?  It  is  easy  to  see  that  with 
reference  to  every  such  custom,  however  sacred,  one  who 


DR.  RYDER'S  REPLY.  27 

takes  the  naked  fact  apart  from  its  associations,  may  find 
abundant  material  for  ridicule.  But  whether  a  fair-minded 
man  will  allow  himself  to  treat  any  serious  subject  in  that 
manner,  is  a  question  upon  which  there  is  no  occasion  that 
I  should  pronounce  judgment.  Mr.  Ingersoll  makes  a  sim- 
ilar blunder  in  what  he  says  about  the  custom  of  sacrificing 
doves  for  the  use  of  priests,  since  the  practice  did  not  exist 
among  the  Hebrews  until  hundreds  of  years  after  the  event 
which  he  seeks  to  ridicule. 

Top-Heavy — Too   Broad  a  Structure   Reared   on  a  Too  Nar- 
row Base. 

My  third  specification  is,  that  he  treats  a  particular  inter- 
pretation of  the  Bible  as  the  undisputed  word  of  God.  He 
assumes  that  this  or  that  is  Bible  doctrine  because  some- 
body may  at  some  time  have  taught  it,  and  then  denounces 
the  whole  Bible  as  unworthy  the  respect  of  mankind. 
This  feature  of  the  address  runs  through  the  whole  of  it. 
But,  in  this  respect,  candor  compels  me  to  say  his  method 
is  that  of  Thomas  Paine  in  his  "Age  of  Reason,"  and  of  a 
certain  class,  but  not  the  better  class,  of  so-called  infidel 
writers.  Mr.  Paine  reproved  the  w  orld  for  believing  what 
he  showed  to  be  unreasonable  doctrines,  and  called  upon 
the  people  to  throw  away  their  Bibles  for  teaching  such 
sentiments;  but  it  was  Mr.  Paine,  and  not  the  Bible  that  was 
in  fault,  for  the  doctrines  which  he  shed  so  much  ink  to 
condemn  are  not  taught  in  the  Bible.  Mr.  Ingersoll's 
method  is  precisely  the  same.  If  he  wishes  to  hold  np  to 
the  contempt  of  mankind  certain  doctrines  that  some  sect 
may  have  believed,  or  even  does  believe,  let  him  announce 
his  subject,  keep  to  his  text,  and  go  ahead ;  but  to  go  from 
place  to  place,  exhorting  the  people  everywhere  to  throw 
away  their  Bibles,  under  the  pretense  that  these  representa- 


23  MISTAKES  OF  INGEBSOLL. 

tions  of  his  are  the  undisputed  word  of  God,  is  simply  an 
outrage  upon  the  Christian  public,  and  unworthy  any*  man 
who  claims  to  be  fair-minded. 

Mr.  Ingersoll's  references  to  the  clergy  disappoint  me. 
He  speaks  of  them  as  if  they  were  a  set  of  fools,  and  does 
not  add  that  they  are  all  graduates  of  prisons,  and  a  pack  of 
scoundrels  generally.  To  which  gentlemanly  references  we 
need  only  say,  that  in  this  slanderous  speech  he  is  guilty 
of  the  same  offense  against  fairness  and  good  breeding  that 
is  committed  by  any  nominal  Christian  who,  either  through 
Windless  or  perversity,  can  see  nothing  good  in  the  services 
of  the  distinguished  infidels  of  history,  and  who,  to  preju- 
dice the  public  against  them,  resort  to  the  mean  subterfuge 
of  misrepresenting  their  positions,  and  telling  falsehoods 
about  them.  If  any  man,  in  an  address  before  this  com- 
munity, should  treat  the  writings  of  Yoltaire  as  shabbily  as 
Mr.  Ingersoll  has  treated  the  writings  of  Moses, — and  as  to 
that,  the  entire  Bible, — the  Colonel  would  have  to  go  out- 
side the  Psalms  of  David  to  find  imprecations  to  express 
his  contempt.  His  references  to  Andover  have,  of  course, 
nothing  to  do  with  "  The  Mistakes  of  Moses,"  but  they 
relate  to  an  important  subject,  and  are  a  pertinent  illustra- 
tion of  the  eminent  unfairness  of  the  general  address.  This 
is  what  he  says:  "They  have  in  Massachusetts,  at  a  place 
called  Andover,  a  kind  of  minister  factory;  and  every  Pro- 
fessor in  that  factory  takes  an  oath  in  every  five  years  that, 
so  help  him  God,  he  will  not  during  the  next  five  years 
intellectually  advance;  and  probably  there  is  no  oath  he 
could  easier  keep.  They  believe  the  same  creed  they  first 
taught  when  the  foundation  stone  was  laid,  and  now,  when 
they  send  out  a  minister  they  brand  him,  as  hardware  from 
Birmingham  and  Sheffield.  And  every  man  who  knows 
where  he  was  educated  knows  his  creed,  knows  every  argu- 
ment of  his  creed,  every  book  that  he  has  read,  and  just 


DR.  RYDER'S  REPLY.  20 

what  he  amounts  to  intellectually,  and  knows  that  he  will 
shrink  and  shrivel  and  become  more  and  more  stupid  day 
after  day  until  he  meets  with  death." 

My  personal  sympathy  with  the  Andover  Theological 
School  is  not,  as  you  may  suppose,  very  deep  and  ardent. 
I  respect  the  generosity  and  self-sacrifice -of  the  five  noble 
minds — one  of  whom  was  a  woman — that  founded  the  insti- 
tution in  1807,  and  the  aid  which  it  has  given  to  liberal  and 
exact  scholarship.  On  the  whole,  I  do  not  like  the  rule  to  which 
Mr.  Ingersoll  refers.  Probably  many  of  those  in  charge  of 
the  institution  do  not.  I  understand  it  to  be  a  custom  con- 
tingent upon  certain  endowments  made  long  ago,  and  which 
is  observed  as  a  matter  of  form.  But  the  rule  is  not  fairly 
open  to  the  objection  that  Mr.  Ingersoll  makes  against  it. 
First,  it  simply  relates  to  the  theological  professors,  and 
does  not  concern  the  students.  Second,  it  compels  no  man 
to  take  it  who  does  not  wish  to.  The  University  says,  in 
effect,  we  believe  in  certain  doctrines;  we  desire  the  instruc- 
tion of  this  institution  to  be  in  accordance  with  these  ideas. 
Can  you  conscientiously  teach  them?  If  so,  we  wish  you; 
if  not,  we  do  not  wish  you.  But  if  you  come  to  us,  you 
are  not  compelled  to  remain,  but  can  go  where  you  will,  and 
when  you  will,  and  teach  what  you  please;  but  so  long  as 
you  remain  in  the  service  of  this  institution  we  expect  you 
to  carry  out  the  purposes  of  its  founders.  What  is  there  in 
this  that  is  particularly  narrow  and  dementing?  But  the 
Colonel  repudiates  his  own  positions.  He  says:  "  The  com- 
mon school  is  the  bread  of  life,  but  there  should  be  nothing 
taught  in  the  school  except  what  somebody  knows;  any- 
thing else  should  not  be  maintained  by  a  system  of  general 
taxation." 

Ingersoll's  Inconsistency! 

But,  let  us  inquire,  who  is  to  decide  "what  somebody 
knows?"     Practically,  the  answer  is,  the  people,  or  their 


30  MISTAKES  OF  INGERSOLL. 

representatives,  in  school  boards,  committees,  etc.  They 
select  the  text-books,  and  they  expect  instructors  whom  they 
engage  to  follow  them,  for  the  text-books  are  assumed  to 
embody  what  is  true  on  the  subjects  to  which  they  relate. 
What  would  the  lecturer  say  of  a  teacher  in  one  of  our  public 
schools  who  should  to-day  teach  the  rejected  doctrine  that 
the  sun  revolves  about  the  earth?  "What,  but  this:  turn 
him  out  and  put  some  one  in  his  place  who  teaches  the 
truth — which,  being  interpreted,  means,  teaches  according 
to  the  authorized  text-books.  Why,  on  the  very  occasion  of 
the  lecture  itself,  after  the  Colonel  had  denounced  Andover 
for  pledging  loyalty  to  certain  doctrines,  and  which  act  he 
characterizes  as  so  harmful  to  freedom  of  thought,  he  him- 
self demands  of  the  people  whom  he  is  addressing  that  they 
will  never  support  a  certain  form  of  doctrine,  nor  give  money 
to  aid  in  building  any  church  in  which  they  are  taught. 
His  language  is:  "I  would  have  every  one  who  hears  me 
swear  that  he  will  never  contribute  another  dollar  to  build 
another  church  in  which  is  taught  such  infamous  lies." 
Mark  you,  not  simply  a  pledge  for  five  years,  but  they  are 
never  to  change  their  views.  My  friends,  is  there  no  such 
thing  as  consistency  in  belief  ?  Is  one  a  bigot  because  he 
says,  This  is  what  I  believe,  and  this,  therefore,  I  defend? 
Are  these  men  to  be  ridiculed  and  assailed,  and  only  those 
who  shirk  such  responsibility  to  be  held  up  as  patterns  and 
guides?  Brethren,  I  am  not  speaking  of  some  sophomoric 
oration,  but  about  the  deliberate  thought  of  a  man  who  has 
made  himself  famous  in  this  line  of  labor,  and  of  whom  our 
townsman  who  gracefully  introduced  him  said,  "  a  man  who 
does  his  own  thinking,  and  who  thinks  before  he  says." 
Now,  of  every  such  man  it  is  safe  to  say,  he  knows  that 
organization  is  essential  to  the  welfare  of  society,  and  is 
perfectly  consistent  with  liberty  of  thought.  The  free- 
thinkers of  this  country  are  organized  as  well  as  others; 


DR.  RYDER'S  REPLY.  31 

and  it  is  their  right  to  he  if  they  have  anything  to  teach  or 
defend.  A  Christian  combination,  against  which  some  peo- 
ple hurl  their  anathemas,  is  simply  the  grouping  together 
of  those  who  have  a  similar  mind  and  purpose,  the  better  to 
do  this  work  which  they  have  in  common.  Of  course  there 
has  been  in  connection  with  some  of  these  denominations  a 
fearful  amount  of  bigotry.  When  we  come  to  that  topic  we 
are  quite  at  home.  Bigotry  is  no  friend  of  ours:  we  owe 
him  no  service.  The  denomination  which  this  church  rep- 
resents has  received  from  the  dominant  sects  about  us  a 
pretty  large  share  of  persecution  and  abuse.  But,  for  all 
that,  we  do  not  propose  to  follow  the  lecturer's  example  and 
call  our  brethren  hard  names,  simply  because  they  apply 
such  epithets  to  us. 

He   Has   no   Poetry   in    His   Soul ;   Ergo,    etc. 

My  fourth  specification  is,  that  he  misrepresents  the  wri- 
tings of  Moses,  and,  as  to  that,  the  entire  Bible,  by  treating 
its  metaphoric  language  as  literal  statements. 

Think  of  a  man,  in  this  age  of  light,  speaking  of  he  pic- 
tured representation  of  the  Old  Testament  in  this  way: 
"They  believed  that  an  angel  could  take  a  lever,  raise  a 
window,  and  let  out  the  desired  quantity  of  moisture.  I 
find  out  in  the  Psalms  that  he  bowed  the  heavens  and  came 
down."  I  wonder  if  the  gentleman  can  see  anything  but 
mere  literalism  in  this  passage?  "As  the  mountains  round 
about  Jerusalem,  so  the  Lord  is  round  about  His  people  from 
henceforth,  even  forever."  Like  other  nations,  the  Hebrews 
have  their  patriotic,  descriptive,  didactic,  and  lyrical  poems 
in  the  same  varieties  as  other  nations;  but  with  them,  unlike 
other  nations,  whatever  may  be  the  form  of  their  poetry,  it 
always  possesses  the  characteristic  of  religion.  Even  their 
patriotic  songs  are  a  part  of  their  religion.  The  Jews  have 
taught  the  world  its  devotional  poetry.     If  there  is  to  be 

3 


32  MISTAKES  OF  INGERSOLL. 

found  anywhere  conceptions  of  the  Deity  and  of  the  universe 
more  remarkable  for  their  sublimity  and  grandeur  than  are 
met  with  in  the  sacred  books  of  the  Jews,  I  know  not  where 
to  look  for  them.  Certainly  when  they  are  compared  with 
the  religious  poems  of  other  countries,  most  nearly  contem- 
poraneous, as  those  of  Homer  and  Iiesiod,  they  are  so  vastly 
superior  as  to  lead  to  the  belief  that,  if  the  poets  of  idola- 
trous Greece  drew  their  inspiration  from  human  genius  and 
learning,  those  of  Judea  had  a  higher  illumination. 

Additional    Misrepresentations. 

My  fifth  specification  is,  that  the  representation  given  in 
the  lecture  of  the  Hebrews  as  a  people,  is  almost  wholly  in- 
correct, both  as  to  the  work  undertaken  by  them  and  the 
effect  of  that  work  upon  mankind. 

We  have  no  disposition  to  shut  our  eyes  to  the  ignorance, 
cruelty  and  superstition  of  the  Hebrew  race  in  the  early 
periods  of  their  history.  There  was  but  little  in  them  that 
gave  the  promise  of  a  great  nation  when  Moses  led  them 
out  of  Egypt.  They  were  low  in  the  scale  of  civilization. 
Many  of  the  things  done  by  them  we  cannot  justify,  and 
we  are  not  required  to  do  so.  But  what  arrests  our  atten- 
tion is,  that  almost  from  the  first  they  show  a  gradual  im- 
provement in  their  condition,  and  finally  reach  that  proud 
pre-eminence  when  Jerusalem  became  the  Athens  of  its 
day.  There  are.  two  points  of  view  from  which  to  judge  of 
the  early  history  of  any  people:  one  is,  to  compare  it  with 
that  of  contemporary  nations,  and  the  other  is,  to  compare 
it  with  our  own  time.  It  is  manifest  that  the  former  is  the 
proper  basis  of  judgment.  Consider,  then,  as  already  inti- 
mated, who  the  people  were  that  Moses  thus  led  out  of 
Egypt.  Reflect  that  they  were  but  children  in  intelligence, 
and  that  the  higher  forms  of  thought  had  but  little  influence 
over  them ;  and  that  if  they  were  held  to  the  law  of  duty, 


DR.  RYDER'S  REPLY.  33 

and  organized  into  a  nation,  it  must  be  by  such  material 
forms  and  simple  customs  as  they  could  comprehend.  Re- 
flect, furthermore,  that  these  people  had  been  brought  up  in 
the  midst  of  idolatry,  and  that  in  leaving  Egypt  they  did 
not  get  away  from  its  influences,  but  that,  wherever  they 
went,  they  were  assailed  by  it;  that  idolatry  was  almost  the 
universal  form  of  worship,  and  that  it  was  a  mighty  task  to 
educate  these  people  in  the  doctrine  of  the  one  only  living 
and  true  God,  and  hold  them  to  it.  Reflect,  furthermore, 
that  to  secure  this  end  much  might  then  be  done  which, 
under  the  circumstances,  would  be  at  least  excusable,  that 
should  not  be  done  now.  Fairness  requires  that  we  con- 
sider whether  the  custom  originated  with  the  Jews  them- 
selves, and  what  was  its  spirit  and  purpose. 

Prominent  mention  is  made  in  the  lecture  of  polygamy 
in  connection  with  the  Jews,  and  one  would  infer  from 
what  he  says  that  the  custom  of  plurality  of  wives  originated 
with  them,  and  that  it  was  a  custom  peculiar  to  them. 
This  is  his  language:  "Is  there  a  woman  here  who  believes 
in  the  institution  of  polygamy?  Is  there  a  man  here  who 
believes  in  that  infamy?  You  say  i  no,  we  do  not.'  Then 
you  are  better  than  your  God  was  4,000  years  ago.  Four 
thousand  years  ago  he  believed  in  it,  taught  it,  and  upheld 
it."  The  facts  appear  to  be  these:  Polygamy  has  existed 
from  time  immemorial.  Even  in  the  Homeric  age  of  the 
Greeks  it  prevailed  to  some  extent,  and,  though  not  known 
in  republican  Rome,  it  practically  prevailed  under  the 
Empire,  owing  to  the  prevalence  of  divorce;  but  in  what 
we  call  the  Eastern  nations  the  custom  has  been  almost 
universal,  being  sanctioned  by  all  religions,  including  that 
of  Mohammedanism.  In  this  regard  the  Hebrews,  to  a  cer- 
tain extent,  followed  the  prevalent  custom  viz:  the  law  of 
Moses  did  not  forbid  it,  but  did  contain  many  provisions 
against  its   worst  abuses,   and  such  as  were  intended  to 


34  MISTAKES  OF  IXGEESOLL. 

restrict  it  within  narrow  limits;  and,  as  the  spirit  of  the 
Hebrew  religion  advanced  the  civilization  of  the  nation, 
the  practice  more  and  more  fell  into  disuse,  until  it  finally 
died  out;  and  in  the  glimpses  of  Jewish  life  which  the  New 
Testament  gives  us,  there  are  no  traces  of  it  discernible. 
Since  the  Hebrew  race  the  world  over,  for  some  2,000  years, 
lias  as  much  as  any  other  people  discountenanced  such 
practices,  though  still  firmly  believing  in  Moses  as  the 
prophet  of  God,  it  is  clear  that  they  do  not  consider  polyg- 
amy any  part  of  the  Jewish  system,  but  a  custom  permit- 
ted for  a  season  because  so  universally  practiced  by  the 
surrounding  nations. 

Doctor   Ryder   Propounds  a   Question. 

But  just  here  comes  in  a  question  of  high  importance. 
If  there  is  nothing  in  Judaism  to  exalt  woman — -and  every 
reference  to  her  in  their  sacred  books  is  one  of  "  humiliation 
and  shame  " — how  happens  it  that  the  Jews  discarded  the 
custom  of  polygamy  some  two  thousand  years  ago,  while 
the  practice  still  prevails  among  the  nations  of  the  East, 
and  notably  in  Mohammedanism,  which,  in  so  many  respects, 
takes  the  external  form  of  Judaism?  The  truth  is,  that  great 
injustice  has  been  done  to  the  real  religion  of  the  Hebrews, 
by  both  Christians  and  unbelievers.  We  have  judged  it  too 
exclusively  by  the  Mosaic  law,  and  the  mere  letter  of  it  at 
that.  Real  Judaism  is  not  the  Old  Testament,  but  that 
which  has  come  out  of  it— the  result  of  its  growth,  and  the 
expansion  of  its  inherent  forces.  Long  before  the  advent 
of  our  Lord  the  Mosaic  law  had  virtually  given  way  to  the 
Jewish  religion,  and  it  is  that  religion,  the  spirit  of  which 
in  the  beginning  so  largely  came  from  the  great  law-giver 
himself  that  has  had  three  thousand  years  of  existence  to 
certify  its  right  to  live,  and  which  to-day  assigns  it  a  most 
honorable  place  among  the  religions  of  humanity.     And   in 


DR.  RYDER'S  REPLY.  35 

dismissing  this  branch  of  our  subject,  it  seems  pertinent  to 
inquire,  where  did  Moses  obtain  his  religious  ideas?  The 
Egyptians  had  reached  high  advancement  in  the  arts  and 
sciences  in  the  time  of  Moses,  but  their  degradation  in  refer- 
ence to  religion  is  unmistakable.  It  is  said  of  Moses  that 
he  a  was  learned  in  all  the  wisdom  of  the  Egyptians,  and 
was  mighty  in  words  and  deeds;  "  and  he  was  no  doubt 
greatly  aided  by  what  he  had  learned  from  them,  but  it 
seems  too  evident  to  admit  of  discussion  that  he  did  not  get 
his  religious  ideas  from  that  source.  Whence  came  they? 
But,  whatever  may  be  our  answer  to  this  question,  there 
can  be,  it  seems  to  me,  but  one  opinion  as  to  the  respect 
due  to  the  illustrious  religious  leader  who  has  made  upon 
the  race  so  profound  an  impression  for  good. 

The  five  specifications  now  before  you  cover  the  evidence 
we  offer  of  the  correctness  of  our  general  proposition,  viz.: 
that  the  address  upon  "  The  Mistakes  of  Moses,"  is  a  con- 
spicuous illustration  of  prejudice  and  unfairness. 

Ingersoll  Admits  His  Sad  Need  of  Inspiration. 

Col.  Ingersoll  uses  this  language:  "  Nothing  needs  inspir- 
ation but  a  falsehood  or  a  mistake.  A  fact  never  went  into 
partnership  with  a  miracle."  "  A  fact  will  fit  every  other 
fact  in  the  universe,  and  that  is  how  you  can  tell  whether 
or  not  it  is  a  fact."  Suppose  we  test  this  rule.  How  about 
good  and  evil,  truth  and  error,  the  mysterious  and  the  evi- 
dent, divine  sovereignty  and  human  freedom,  heat  and  cold, 
art  and  asceticism,  economy  and  benevolence,  government 
and  freedom,  each  of  which  is  an  undisputed  fact,  but  each 
two  facts  that  we  thus  group  together  no  more  fit  each  other 
than  the  centripetal  and  centrifugal  forces,  which,  acting  in 
opposite  directions,  hold  the  universe  together?  My  friends, 
there  is  a  recognizable  distinction  between  the  knowable 
and  unknowable.     But  the  line  that  separates   the  two  is 


36  MISTAKES  OF  INGERSOLL. 

not  sharply  denned.  The  border  land  between  them  seems 
sometimes  near  and  at  Other  times  very  far  away.  The 
realm  beyond  the  knowable  is  the  realm  of  mystery,  and 
out  of  it  come  some  of  the  most  potential  forces  that  sway 
our  lives.  What  we  call  the  knowable  is  those  things  that 
can  be  demonstrated — can  be  proved  to  be  true  by  a  prac- 
tical method.  But  consider  how  small  a  portion  of  our  real 
life  is  covered  by  any  such  form  of  real  evidence.  For 
neither  our  affections,  nor  onr  tastes,  nor  our  judgments, 
nor  our  beliefs,  nor  our  ambitions,  nor  the  higher  expres- 
sions of  our  moral  natures,  can  be  thus  demonstrated. 
They  do  not  in  any  way  depend  upon  the  classification  of 
facts  in  nature,  but  are  cognizable  by  our  consciousness, 
and  are  so  widely  operative  in  our  daily  life,  that  it  almost 
seems  as  if  what  we  call  the  knowable  never  touches  us  at  all. 
Science  has  nothing  to  say  about,  or  to  do  with,  either 
morals,  religion,  benevolence,  duty,  or  inspiration.  The 
sources  of  life,  the  cause  of  thought,  of  affection,  passion, 
hope,  and  love,  are  all  incomprehensible  to  science,  and  will 
remain  so  till  the  end  of  time.  "  There  is  no  science  of  the 
soul,  any  more  than  there  is  a  prayer  in  mathematics."  How 
utterly,  then,  does  one  misapprehend  and  misstate  the  real 
facts  of  human  experience,  who  teaches  that  "  nothing  needs 
inspiration  but  a  falsehood,  or  a  mistake,"  and  that  one  is  to 
accept  nothing  as  true  which  cannot  be  demonstrated.  How 
much  wiser  and  how  much  better  are  the  words  of  St.  Au- 
gustine, when  he  says:  "  God  exists  more  truly  than  he  can 
be  thought  of;  He  can  be  thought  of  more  truly  than  he 
can  be  spoken  of."  For  myself,  I  reverently  believe  that 
the  Bible  contains  a  revelation  from  God.  I  say  contains 
a  revelation  from  God,  not  that  it  is  in  itself  such  a  revela- 
tion, for  the  Bible,  as  such,  was  not  revealed.  The  inspira- 
tion that  breathes  through  its  pages  is  of  some  of  the  things 
written,  but  not  of  all;  the  inspiration  is  rather  of  the 


DR.  RYDER'S  REPLY.  37 

thought,  purpose,  the  leadings  of  God,  than  of  the  letter  in 
which  they  are  expressed.  There  is,  to  my  mind,  no  appeal 
from  the  words  of  Christ  once  satisfied  that  he  uttered  the 
sayings  which  are  attributed  to  Him  in  the  Gospels,  and 
they  are,  to  me  at  least,  infallibly  true,  and  literally  "  the 
words  of  eternal  life." 

Ingersoll's   "Religion    of  Humanity"   All   Right   Except 

the  Religion. 
The  influence  of  such  an  address  is  to  completely  destroy 
the  religious  faith  which  the  people  now  have,  and  give 
them  nothing  in  return.  It  is  true  Mr.  Ingersoll  commends 
to  his  hearers  "  the  religion  of  humanity."  But  what  does 
he*  mean  by  it?  The  answer  is,  he  means  simply  Atheism, 
which  is  virtually  the  rejection  of  all  religion,  since  it  is 
the  denial  of  the  being  of  God  himself.  JSTow  with  God 
dethroned,  the  name  religion  has  no  further  use.  What, 
then,  is  the  religion  of  humanity  to  those  who  deny  the 
existence  of  God,  and  leave  everything  either  to  chance  or  in- 
exorable law?  One  might  infer  from  the  assumption  of  these 
Atheistic  teachers  that  free-thinkers  are  the  only  people  who 
have  any  religion  of  humanity,  or  who  practice  it.  The 
general  impression  made  by  the  Colonel's  lecture  is  that 
Christians  are  a  bad  lot — mean,  hypocritical,  demented  kind 
of  folks;  and  that  bright  and  progressive  people,  such  as 
"  have  brains "  (though  it  does  not  require  a  large  supply 
of  that  article  to  qualify  one  to  ridicule  another  person's 
religion)  and  "  do  their  own  thinking,"  reject  all  such 
absurdities  as  revealed  religion,  and  are  governed  by  some 
sort  of  a  higher  law. 

Now  that'this  view  of  human  nature,  so  complimentary 
and  congenial,  withal,  is  "  quite  taking"  is  very  likely  true. 
One  likes  to  be  patted  on  the  back  in  this  way,  and  be 
called   "  progressive,"  and  not  hide-bound  like   those  old 


33  MISTAKES  OF  IXGEBSOLL. 

fogies,  and  stupid  theological  graduates,  and  owlish  minis- 
ters, and  such  sort  of  folks.  But  somehow  it  does  not  se^m 
to  stay  upon  the  public  stomach  after  it  is  taken.  For  this 
is  just  the  kind  of  talk  in  which  noisy  infidels  have  indulged 
for  the  past  300  years.  "Christianity  is  virtually  extinct," 
they  say,  "  and  now  we  are  to  have  a  new  order  of  things. A 
But,  for  some  reason,  Christianity  does  not  die,  ,and  the 
world  moves  forward  in  much  the  old  way." 

The  truth  is,  some  things  seem  very  well  as  declamation 
that  utterly  elude  you  when  you  attempt  to  embody  them 
in  vital  forms.  As  theories  they  look  well,  but'in  practice 
they  are  worthless.  They  are  as  beautiful  as  foam  and  just 
as  substantial.  Where  are  the  monuments  of  free  religion  ? 
In  the  struggle  for  religious  liberty  in  France  I  recognize 
the  powerful  influence  of  Yoltaire;  and  an  advocacy  of  a 
true  democracy  in  this  country,  very  few,  if  any,  did  more 
by  their  pen  than  Thomas  Paine;  but,  aside  from  these 
general  benefits  to  society,  where  are  the  testimonies  of  the 
work  they  wrought?  What  did  they  do  for  the  more  per- 
fect organization  of  society,  and  for  the  elevation  and 
purity  of  the  public  morals?  I  repeat,  where  are  the  mon- 
uments of  this  free  religion?  Has  it  nothing  to  show  in  its 
own  behalf  but  slanderous  assertions?  And  has  its  most 
distinguished  advocate  in  this  country  degenerated  into  a 
jesting  scoffer?  Who  built  the  institutions  of  learning 
throughout  the  Christian  world,  and  who  supports  them? 
Who  organized  the  institutions  of  charity,  and  who  sustains 
them?  I  repeat,  this  "religion  of  humanity,"  whatever 
that  may  be,  does  well  enough  to  talk  about,  but,  somehow, 
when  there  is  solid  work  to  be  done  nobody  wants  it,  and 
somehow,  nobody  seems  to  do  or  pay  much  towards  sup- 
porting it.  The  leading  universities  in  Germany  that  did 
so  much  forty  years  ago  in  disseminating  Rationalism  are 
now  comparatively  empty,    while  those  of    the    religious 


DR.  RYDER'S  REPLY.  39 

schools  are  patronized.  To-daj  every  prominent  university 
in  Germany  except  that  in  Heidelberg  is  controlled  in  the 
interests  of  revealed  religion,  and  Heidelberg  lias  but  very 
few  theological  students  left.  And,  if  one  may  judge  of 
the  effects  of  teaching  by  the  deportment  of  those  taught, 
it  will  be,  I  think,  nearly  the  unanimous  opinion  of  travelers 
that  they  are  very  badly  instructed,  for  a  prominent  part  of 
the  business  of  the  students  of  that  institution  seems  to  be 
to  get  up  quarrels  with  each  other  and  with  the  public,  and 
fight  duels.  The  truth  is,  that  the  sober  second  thought  of 
the  thinking  world  has  shut  its  "  colossal  shears"  upon  the 
theories  of  Bauer,  Strauss,  and  Henan,  and  no  wisdom  of 
man  will  ever  reunite  the  dissevered  fragments. 

Dr.  Ryder  tells  a  Little   Story  for  the  Sake  of  Illustration. 

How  strange  it  is  that  nearly  all  the  world  should  be  such 
simpletons,  and  that  human  nature  persists  in  exploding  all 
these  fine  theories  that  have  no  real  religion  in  them.  But 
then,  you  know,  some  people  are  wise  in  their  own  conceits. 
Let  me  relate  an  incident:  "  An  eminent  lawyer  had  in 
court  a  very  clear  case.  After  presenting  an  array  of  testi- 
mony, law,  and  precedents  that  he  thought  was  unanswer- 
able, he  submitted  his  case.  To  his  utter  astonishment,  the 
Judge,  who  was  bigotedly  and  dogmatically  on  the  opposite 
side  in  prejudice,  decided  every  point  of  the  case  against 
him.  After  he  had  recovered  from  his  amazement,  he  arose 
and  proceeded  to  read  Blackstone  and  leading  jurists,  the 
statute  law,  and  judicial  decisions,  flatly  contradicting  the 
decision  of  the  Court.  The  Judge  pompously  interrupted 
him  with:  '  That  will  do  you  no  good;  the  mind  of  the 
court  is  made  up;  cannot  change  it.'  The  lawyer  replied: 
4 1  have  no  expectation  of  changing  the  opinion  of  the 
court.  I  do  not  question  the  infallibility  and  the  infallible 
accuracy  of  its  decision.     I  only  want  to  show  what  con  sum- 


40  MISTAKES  OF  INGERSOLL. 

mate  fools  Blackstone,  Kent,  and  all  jurists,  our  legislators, 
and  all  the  judges,  except  the  judge  of  this  court,  must  have 
been.' " 

Friends  of  humanity,  lovers  of  the  truth  as  it  is  in  Jesus, 
can  we  afford  to  trifle  with  such  a  momentous  issue  as  this? 
Is  there  nothing  sacred,  nothing  but  the  mere  husk  of  things 
in  which  it  is  safe  for  us  to  place  our  faith?  Is  there  no  per- 
manent joy  this  side  the  grave,  and  only  the  blackness  of 
darkness  beyond  ?  Is  the  religion  in  which  so  many  millions 
trust  simply  a  delusion,  and  the  God  whom  we  adore  merely 
a  myth?  If  so,  why  are  we  in  this  world,  and  what  is  this 
world?  What  is  anything  for  but  to  lure  us  into  disap- 
pointment? 

Nay,  we  believe  in  God,  the  Father  everlasting,  and  in 
Jesus  Christ,  His  Son.  In  the  love  which  They  awaken,  we 
desire  to  live;  and  in  the  trust  which  They  inspire,  we  hope 
to  die. 


DR.  HERFORDS  REPLY.  41 


DE.    HEKFOBD'S    EEPLT. 


All  through  my  life  I  have  felt  a  very  deep  sympathy 
for  those  who  have  become  alienated  from  Christianity  by 
the  irrational  and  unworthy  things  often  taught  in  its  name. 
It  seems  such  a  miserable,  gratuitous  loss,  as  if  there  was 
not  enough  to  make  even  the  purest  faith  often  dim  and 
doubtful  without  it  being  made  more  so  by  the  follies  of 
those  who  should  strengthen  men  in  it !  But  so  it  is.  And 
of  course  one  cannot  expect  men  in  that  strong  reaction  to 
be  very  discriminating  in  what  they  attack.  But  there  are 
limits!  A  man  is  not  absolved  from  the  duty  of  thinking 
and  speaking  fairly  by  having  come  to  reject  the  popular 
opinions  of  society.  Now  it  seems  to  me  that  this  recent 
lecture  of  Col.  Ingersoll's  overpasses  all  just  limits.  I 
frankly  own  its  brilliant  eloquence,  its  irresistible  humor, 
and  the  passionate  impulses  of  tender  human  sympathy 
which  flash  out  in  it.  I  can  quite  understand  many  being 
carried  along  by  these.  But  afterward  has  to  come  the  sober 
thinking  and  the  honest  questioning.  What  does  it  amount 
to?  Are  its  positions  true?  Are  its  arguments  fair?  It 
seems  to  me  that  they  are  glaringly  the  opposite.  The 
whole  test  that  he  applies  to  his  subject  is  a  mistake;  the 
way  in  which  he  applies  it  is  not  even  moderately  just;  its 
representations  are  one-sided;  its  illustrations  are  carica- 
ture. And  the  worst  of  all  is  that  there  is  no  sign  even  of 
any  desire  or  attempt  to  be  fair! 


42  MISTAKES  OF  INGERSOLL. 

The   Ingersoll  Paradox. 

The  first  of  Col.  Ingersoll's  mistakes,  is  in  the  whole  point 
of  view  in  which  he  places  the  Bible  in  order  to  make  it  the 
easier  target  for  his  wit.  He  starts  by  repudiating  any  idea 
of  its  having  been  written  by  God's  inspiration;  and  yet 
all  through  talks  as  if  God  were  responsible  for  it — as  if 
God  had  said  this  and  threatened  that — and  becomes  quite 
heroic  in  his  declaration  that  God  may  damn  him,  but  he 
won't  believe  such  things!  When  once  inspiration  is  put 
aside,  such  declarations  are  mere  clap-trap!  When  you  look 
through  all  this,  you  find  that  in  reality  he  simply  regards 
the  Bible  as  the  work,  the  ideas  of  men.  Very  well;  then 
take  it  so,  and  judge  it  fairly  in  that  light!  If  the  book  of 
Genesis  is,  as  Col.  Ingersoll  believes,  the  writings  and  the 
ideas  of  ancient  men,  then  do  not  attack  it  because  the  ideas 
are  not  those  of  men  to-day.  But  that  is  what  he  is  con- 
stantly doing.  He  is  very  fond  of  saying,  "The  question  is 
not,  is  it  inspired,  but  is  it  true?"  That  sounds  very  plaus- 
ible, but  you  know,  as  applied  to  any  ancient  book,*it  is 
simply  nonsense.  It  is  a  test  which  you  don't  apply  to  any 
other  ancient  book  in  the  world.  You  do  not  try  Homer's 
"  Iliad  "  by  the  test  of  whether  it  is  true.  When  a  clay 
tablet  is  dug  up  at  Nineveh,  or  a  papyrus  is  found  in  some 
mummy-wrappings,  you  don't  ask,  Is  it  true?  and  if  not, 
throw  it  away.  The  question  about  all  such  things  is  not, 
"Are  they  true?"  but  "Are  they  genuine  relics  and  repre- 
sentations of  the  thought  of  the  ancient  world?"  By-and- 
by  indeed  will  come  the  question,  how  far  any  records  or 
statements  in  such  ancient  writings  can  be  taken  to  throw 
light  on  actual  history — how  far  their  statements  are  alle- 
gorical or  poetical,  or  mere  ancient  tradition?  Well  and 
good.  And  by  all  means  let  those  questions  be  applied  to 
Genesis;  apply  them  just  as  you  would  to  any  other  ancient 


DR.  IIERFORD'S  REPLY.  43 

writings;  but  in  the  name  of  common  fairness  don't  pick  it 
to  pieces  by  a  minute  verbal  criticism,  and  a  strained  liber- 
ality which  would  only  be  justifiable  on  the  ground  of  its 
being  verbally  inspired.  That  is  a  mistake  which  may  be 
merely  a  mental  confusion,  but  a  graver  one  lies  beyond. 

Ingersoll's   Exaggerations  and   False   Assertions. 

Mr.  Ingersoll  not  only  applies  a  kind  of  test  to  the  book 
of  Genesis  which  he  would  not  think  of  applying  to  any 
other  book,  but  he  does  not  even  apply  his  own  test  fairly, 
lie  stands  upon  the  very  letter,  but  he  constantly  misrep- 
resents and  twists  the  letter.  He  exaggerates,  makes  things 
worse  than  they  are;  if  he  can  make  a  bad  meaning  anyhow 
he  does  so.  He  says:  "The  gentleman  that  wrote  Genesis 
begins  by  telling  us  that  God  made  the  universe  out  of 
nothing."  It  does  not  say  so.  It  simply  says:  "In  the 
beginning  God  created  the  heaven  and  the  earth."  A  little 
further  on  he  makes  great  fun  of  the  grass  being  created  on 
the  second  day,  while  the  sun  was  not  created  till  the  third 
day,  So  that  the  grass  was  growing  without  having  "  ever 
been  touched  by  a  gleam  of  light."  Yet  right  before  him 
were  these  words,  at  the  beginning  of  all:  "  And  God  said, 
let  there  be  light,  and  there  was  light."  Of  course,  the 
whole  idea  is  that  of  the  world's  childhood,  but  why  strain 
a  point  to  make  it  ridiculous?  It  is  a  far  worse  perversion 
where  he  says:  "You  will  find  by  reading  the  second  chap- 
ter that  God  tried  to  palm  off  on  Adam  a  beast  as  his  help- 
meet." ISTow  there  is  absolutely  no  justification  for  such  a 
representation.  The  whole  thing  is  a  gratuitous  invention 
of  his  own.  These  are  small  verbal  matters,  but  they  show 
the  utter  unscrupulousness  with  which  those  ancient  tradi- 
tions are  exaggerated  and  distorted  to  make  better  point  for 
his  ridicule. 

And  then,  even  in  larger  things,  he  cannot  be  decently 


4A  MISTAKES  OF  INGERSOLL. 

fair,  though  the  explaining  truth  may  lie  on  the  very  sur- 
face. He  quotes  the  first  part  of  the  command  against  mak- 
ing any  graven  image,  and  then  goes  off  into  one  of  its 
tirades  about  that  being  a  law  which  was  "the  death  of  all 
art  "  among  the  Jews.  Not  a  word  about  the  closing  part 
of  the  command — really  the  essence  of  it:  "  Thou  shalt  not 
bow  down  to  them,  nor  worship  them !  "  Why,  even  if  it 
were  as  he  implies,  that  Moses  utterly  prohibited  all  the  art 
of  sculpture,  the  making  of  idols  being  merely  one  part,  still, 
which  was  of  most  importance  to  the  world — that  the  Jews 
should  have  cultivated  art  a  little  more,  or  that  they  should, 
even  at  the  cost  of  art  altogether,  be  kept  from  idolatry? 
But  then  Mr.  Ingersoll  is  not  even  true  in  his  fact.  The 
command  was  only  understood  as  a  command  against  idol- 
making,  not  against  other  forms  of  sculpture,  and  the  best 
proof  of  this  is  that  they  did  have  other  forms  of  sculpture 
even  in  Moses'  time,  and  later  had  art  of  no  ignoble  kind. 
Even  there  in  the  wilderness  we  read  how  the  sacred  ark  was 
by  Moses'  command  shadowed  over  by  the  images  of  two 
cherubim,  with  outstretched  wings  made  of  pure  gold,  and 
th6  candlestick  was  made  with  branches  which  were  shaped 
like  almonds,  alternately  a  bud  and  a  flower.  And  later, 
when  Solomon  built  the  temple,  we  not  only  read  of  two 
similar  cherubim,  but  of  colossal  size,  extending  their  win^s 
over  the  shrine,  but  also  that  "he  carved  all  the  walls  of  the 
house  round  about  with  carved  figures  of  cherubim  and  palm- 
trees  and  open  flowers;  "  while  in  his  own  palace  we  read  of 
sculptured  pillars,  with  pomegranate  capitals,  and  images 
of  oxen  and  lions,  round  the  great  brazen  "laver." 

Or,  take  his  representation  of  Christians  thinking  of 
Heaven  as  a  place  where  their  happiness  will  be  enhanced 
by  seeing  the  tortures  of  the  damned.  Here  he  rises  to  the 
height  of  his  most  fiery  indignation.  And  it  is  a  horrible 
idea.     But  then,  who  holds  it — who  preaches  it?     It  is  an 


DR.  HERFORD'S  REPLY.  45 

idea  of  Heaven  that  was  prevalent  among  one  sect  of  Chris- 
tians a  century  ago.  But  even  they  have  not  preached  it 
for  a  century.  And  yet  he  says,  without  a  word  of  limita- 
tion, "This  is  the  Christian  view  of  Heaven,"  and  makes  a 
powerful  appeal  to  his  hearers  not  to  give  a  "  dollar  to  any 
man  to  preach  that  falsehood."  Why,  there  is  not  a  church 
in  all  the  land  where  he  could  find  a  man  preaching  that 
to  give  his  dollar  to;  no,  not  even  if  the  person  were  only 
a  stump  politician,  turned  preacher  in  the  slack  season  be- 
tween campaigns. 

And  the  same  of  his  representation  of  the  attitude  of 
Christianity  toward  those  who  do  not  believe  in  the  early 
traditions  of  Genesis.  He  represents  Christianity  as  teach- 
ing that  any  man  who  does  not  believe  the  "  rib  story  "  will 
go  to  Hell,  however  good  he  was  in  other  respects.  Is  that 
an  honest  representation?  Why,  even  if  all  orthodoxy 
preached  that,  orthodoxy  is  not  all  of  Christianity.  Has 
Col.  Ingersoll  ever  heard  of  Channing  and  Parker  and  Starr 
King?  Are  the  bodies  of  the  Unitarian  church,  the  Uni- 
versalists,  the  Christians,  the  Quakers,  not  worth  a  passing 
word?  Did  he  not  know  when  he  put  that  champion  joke 
about  the  "  rib  story  "  that  he  was  representing  as  the  teach- 
ing of  the  churches  what  many  entire  churches,  and  the  best 
men  in  all  churches,  never  have  held,  nor  preached,  nor 
countenanced  in  any  way?  Yet  he  comes  rampaging  into 
the  field,  with  a  whoop  and  a  yell,  brandishing  his  shillelah, 
defying  Christianity,  calling  ministers  "owls  "  and  "  idiots," 
and  swooping  round  as  if  he  were  the  first  who  had  found 
out  a  little  common  sense  about  the  Bible!  But  after  all, 
the  real  matter  at  issue  is  not  as  to  this  or  that  exaggerated 
or  unfair  criticism  of  the  Old  Testament,  but  has  it  any 
real,  substantial  worth?  It  has.  It  gives  us  the  origin  of 
the  world's  noblest  religions  faith;  it  shows  us  the  purest 
faith  of  to-day  in  its  first  roots  in  the  far-off  ancient  world; 


43  MISTAKES  OF  INGERSOLL. 

and  so  I  think  it  strengthens  our  conviction  that  that  faith 
is  not  a  temporary  or  isolated  thing  that  may  be  mistaken, 
but  part  of  that  long  development  of  man  which  surely 
corresponds  to  the  truth  and  fact  of  the  universe. 

Dr.   Herford's   Story   of  Moses,   -with   an  Apt  Illustration — 
The  Germinal  Power  of  the  Pentateuch. 

When  I  hear  people  treating  the  Pentateuch  as  something 
they  would  like  to  see  done  away,  I  cannot  help  wishing 
that  it  could  be  dug  up  afresh  in  these  days  of  curious 
research  into  the  past.  Why,  suppose  that  the  Jews  had  no 
such  books;  and  had  not  known  anything  of  their  origin 
except  a  vague  tradition  of  some  sort  of  migration  under 
one  Moses,  and  curiously  fitting  to  this  the  Egyptian  tradi- 
tion— which  is,  you  know,  that  some  thirteen  hundred  years 
before  Christ  a  great  multitude  of  people  had  gone  out  of 
Egypt  led  by  an  Egyptian  priest,  who  taught  them  many 
things  contrary  to  the  Egyptian  religion,  and  afterward 
changed  his  name  to  Moses.  Well,  supposing  then  these 
books  of  the  Pentateuch  should  be  discovered  somewhere 
— why,  the  world  would  go  wild  over  them.  What  would 
it  matter  whether  it  could  be  settled  that  Moses  did  or  did 
not  write  them — or  that  pcssibly  they  were  really  not  writ- 
ten till  centuries  after,  and  only  preserved  what  was  believed 
about  him  at  that  later  date — still  the  fact  would  remain 
that  they  take  us  by  traditions,  at  any  rate,  so  much  further 
back  into  the  past,  and  show  us  there  one  of  the  very  noblest 
stories  of  the  world;— for  that  is  what  the  story  of  Moses 
is.  Take  off  all  the  discount  you  will  for  exaggeration — I 
dare  say  the  numbers  are  immensely  exaggerated — suppose 
the  idea  of  his  having  been  led  by  God  speaking  to  him  to 
have  been  only  his  own  intense  consciousness  of  what  was 
best,  ascribed  to  God ;  suppose  the  idea  of  his  having  been 
helped   by   miracles   to   have  been  only  his  own  reverent 


DR.  HEPFORD'S  REPLY.  47 

impression,  ascribing  every  trouble  that  came  on  Egypt, 
and  every  favoring  circumstance  to  bis  own  people,  to  some 
purposed  and  direct  help  from  God;  all  that  does  not  touch 
the  essence  of  the  story  of  Moses!  There  it  stands — how 
those  Hebrews  through  many  generations  had  sunk  into  the 
Pariah  and  Helot  class  of  that  great  rich  Egyptian  civiliz- 
ation; and  how  at  last  this  Moses  rose  up,  to  rally  them  to 
a  mighty  effort  to  get  right  away  into  some  other  land.  He 
had  been  somehow  brought  up  among  the  Egyptians,  trained 
in  the  sacred  city,  educated  among  the  priests — an  adopted 
son  of  Pharaoh's  daughter — but  he  had  given  it  all  up, 
identified  himself  with  his  down-trodden  people,  and  at  last 
won  for  them  the  liberty  to  go!  And  they  went  out — out 
into  the  great  desert  waste.  What  does  it  matter  that  the 
tradition  of  their  numbers  got  perhaps  enormously  exagger- 
ated %  If  there  were  only  a  hundredth  part — thirty  thousand 
instead  of  three  millions  in  all — there  were  quite  enough  to 
task  their  leader's  fortitude  to  its  utmost;  and  through  those 
books  we  have  at  least  very  living  glimpses  of  him,  in  his 
efforts  to  keep  them  from  grumbling  and  getting  disheart- 
ened ;  in  his  efforts  to  keep  them  true  to  his  simple  teach- 
ing of  the  one  Almighty  God;  in  his  lonely  hours  when  he 
was  listening  for  the  eternal  word,  and  shaping  his  best 
thoughts  which  he  believed  came  to  him  from  God,  into  laws 
for  his  people.  And  there  is  the  great  fact,  you  know — 
however  he  did  it— he  did  guide  and  lead  them  through  that 
long  migration,  and  at  last  brought  them  to  the  land  from 
which  their  fathers  had  gone  out  long  before,  and  bade  them 
go  in  and  possess  it!  And  that  multitude  whom  he  led  out 
of  Egypt  a  race  of  slaves,  servile  with  long  oppression,  at 
every  difficulty  talking  of  going  back,  he  had  in  that  forty 
years  knit  into  a  brave,  hardy,  fierce  race — who  did  go  in 
and  possess  the  land  and  became  the  progenitors  of  one  of 
the  world's  noblest  races.  That  is  the  story  of  Moses 
4 


48  MISTAKES  OF  INGERSOLL. 

— just  the  barest  skeleton  of  it — taking  one,  the  largest, 
most  unmistakable  features;  and  I  say  again  there  is  no 
finer  story  in  history.  And  what  will  you  say  of  a  man  who 
will  make  fun  of  it? 

Why,  what  would  you  think  of  a  man  who  would  go 
around  the  country,  making  fierce  fun  of  Abraham  Lincoln, 
holding  up  his  gaunt,  lank  figure  to  ridicule,  burlesquing 
his  speeches,  denouncing  as  lies  some  of  those  quaint  little 
anecdotes,  and  holding  him  upas  a  fool  and  an  idiot?  And 
jet  that  glorious  work  that  makes  Lincoln's  name  dear — not 
to  Americans  only  but  to  the  lovers  of  freedom  and  of  man 
In  every  nation — that  work  of  his  was  only  the  modern 
counterpart  of  what  Moses  did  in  the  morning  of  the  world! 

But  the  Pentateuch  is  most  valuable,  not  for  the  light  it 
throws  upon  the  origin  of  a  people,  but  for  the  light  it 
throws  upon  the  origin  of  ideas.  In  the  teachings  of  Moses, 
in  the  religion  of  that  little  migrating  tribe,  by-and-by 
fighting  for  its  foothold  in  Palestine,  we  have  the  begin- 
ings  of  those  thoughts  from  which  have  sprung  the  three 
greatest,  most  living  religions  of  the  world — Judaism, 
Christianity  and  Mahommedanism.  Granted,  the  begin- 
nings are  only  rude,  is  that  any  reason  for  making  fun  of 
them?  What  would  }rou  think  of  a  man  who  should  take 
one  of  those  rude  urns  that  they  dig  out  of  the  mound  build- 
er's graves  and  put  it  side  by  side  with  some  beautiful  porce- 
lain of  to-day,  and  scoff  and  sneer  at  those  early  dwellers  on 
the  earth  because  the  best  decoration  they  could  make  was 
a  few  rude  scratches  in  the  clay  with  their  flint-knives? 

Already,  even  so  far  off,  the  idea  of  one  Almighty  God, 
that  which  the  priests  of  Egypt  held  as  a  sacred  mystery — 
if  they  did  hold  it — that  leader  of  the  Hebrews  taught  his 
people  as  the  truth  for  all,  and  the  truth  to  be  kept  ever- 
more before  them.  Already,  too,  in  the  old  world,  where 
every  race  shaped  out  its  thought  of  God  in  some  idol  form, 


DR.  HERFORD'S  REPLY.  49 

that  leader  was  giving  them  as  the  second  of  his  great  com- 
mands that  they  should  make  no  idol  images  at  all  to  wor- 
ship. Already,  too,  they  had  that  idea  of  a  God  of  Right- 
eousness !  True,  their  idea  of  righteousness  was  not  yet  very 
high,  but  the  best  they  knew  they  ascribed  to  God.  "Where 
in  all  the  ancient  world  will  you  find  such  a  description  of 
Deity  as  that  which  Moses  brought  with  him  out  of  the  soli- 
tudes of  Sinai? — "The  Lord;  the  Lord  God,  merciful  and 
gracious,  long  suffering  and  abundant  in  goodness  and 
truth;  keeping  mercy  for  thousands,  bearing  with  iniquity, 
transgression  and  sin,  but  that  will  by  no  means  clear  the 
guilty." 

The  Mosaic  Religion  of  Humanity. 

Eor  is  this  divine  side  of  that  old  Hebrew  religion  all. 
Mr.  Ingersoll  is  very  strong  on  the  religion  of  humanity. 
Indeed,  that  is  the  only  real  religion,  he  says.  Well,  where 
did  the  religion  of  humanity  begin  ?  Why,  it  began  there 
— among  those  same  old  Hebrews.  The  religion  of  a  truer 
thought  of  God  and  of  a  better  thought  of  man  went  to- 
gether even  in  their  beginnings,  as  they  did  afterward  when 
they  both  reached  their  culmination  together  in  Christ,  with 
His  great  teaching  of  love  to  God  and  love  to  man. 

Mr.  Ingersoll,  however,  has  nothing  but  the  bitterest 
contempt  for  the  morality  of  the  Pentateuch,  because  it  is 
behind  the  morality  of  to-day!  "  See,  you  are  better  than 
your  God,"  he  cries;  "for  four  thousand  years  ago  He  be- 
lieved in  polygamy,  and  you  don't !  "  The  truth  of  which 
simply  is  that  four  thousand  years  ago  polygamy  existed 
among  the  Jews,  as  everywhere  else  on  earth  then,  and  even 
their  prophets  do  not  come  to  the  idea  of  its  being  wrong. 
But  what  is  there  to  be  indignant  about  in  that?  Simply 
men — whom  Mr.  Ingersoll  regards,  in  other  lectures,  as 
having  come  up  from  the  brutes — had  then  got  only  so  far 


50  MISTAKES  OF  1XGEESOLL. 

in  their  ideas  of  marriage.  But  if  their  religion  is  a  good 
one,  what  do  you  expect  to  find  it  doing?  Altogether  al- 
tering, even  so  early,  the  marriage  relation,  or  purifying 
and  elevating  it?  Surely  this  is  all  we  can  look  for,  and 
this  we  find.  I  know  that  Mr.  Ingersoll  says:  "There  is 
not  one  word  ahout  woman  in  the  Old  Testament,  except 
the  words  of  shame  and  humiliation."  Well,  though  he 
says  he  has  read  the  Bible  over  again  this  }rear,  I  can  only 
conclude  he  has  read  it  very  hurriedly  and  slightly,  for  not 
only  are  there  such  passages  as  that  of  Naomi  and  Ruth, 
the  Shunamite  woman,  Hannah,  the  mother  of  Samuel,  and 
that  most  beautiful  picture  at  the  close  of  the  book  of  Prov- 
erbs of  a  good  wife,  but  I  think  that  throughout  woman  is 
spoken  of  in  the  Bible,  not  as  the  slave,  but  as  the  compan- 
ion and  the  helpmate.  The  "  wise-hearted  women  "  share 
the  work  of  making  that  goodliest  of  the  tents  which  was  in 
the  desert  wanderings  to  be  the  tabernacle ;  Miriam,  the  sister 
of  Moses,  holds  the  place  of  a  prophetess,  and  other  prophet- 
esses we  read  of;  and  the  whole  law  of  marriage  in  the  Penta- 
teuch, with  its  stern  punishment  of  death  for  adultery,  either 
on  the  part  of  man  as  well  as  woman,  shows  the  process  of 
elevation  towards  that  higher  law  of  one  wife  and  one  husband 
which  had  become  universal  by  the  time  of  Christ. 

Or  take  the  slavery  question  again.  Slavery  was  univer- 
sal in  the  ancient  world.  Men  had  not  come  anywhere  to  a 
sense  of  any  inherent  wrongfulness  in  it  for  a  thousand 
years  or  two  after  the  time  of  Moses.  But  mark  where 
this  finer  humanity  of  the  Mosaic  religion  comes  in;  it  al- 
ready brings  glimpses  of  the  idea  of  an  inalienable  right  to 
liberty— though  not  a  perfect  sight  of  it.  The  law  of  the 
Pentateuch  abounds  with  laws  about  the  relation  of  master 
and  slave,  which,  as  compared  with  what  we  know  of  slavery, 
e.  g.,  among  the  Greeks  and  Romans  a  thousand  years  later, 
were  simply  a  marvel  of  noble  humanized  thought. 


DR.  HERFORD'S  REPLY.  51 

And  then  as  to  the  general  tone  and  character  of  that 
Mosaic  law.  Mr.  Ingersoll  pooh-poohs  the  Ten  Command- 
ments as  merely  what  men  knew  before;  knew  all  along. 
But  such  a  law  as  this:  "  Thou  shalt  not  have  in  thy  bag 
divers  weights,  a  great  and  a  small;  but  thou  shalt  have  a 
perfect  and  just  weight — a  perfect  and  just  measure  shalt 
thou  have — for  all  that  do  such  things,  and  all  that  do  un- 
righteously, are  an  abomination  unto  the  Lord  thy  God;" 
and  this:  "  If  a  man  shall  steal  an  ox  or  a  sheep  he  shall 
restore  five  oxen  for  an  ox  and  four  sheep  for  a  sheep;  "  and 
this:  "Ye  shall  have  one  manner  of  law,  as  well  for  the 
stranger  as  for  one  of  your  own  country,  for  I  am  the  Lord 
your  God;  "  and  this:  "Thou  shalt  not  oppress  an  hired 
servant  that  is  poor  and  needy — whether  he  be  of  thy  breth- 
ren, or  of  the  strangers  that  are  in  the  land;  at  his  day  thou 
shalt  give  him  his  hire;  neither  shall  the  sun  go  down  upon 
it,  for  he  is  poor  and  setteth  his  heart  upon  it."  There  is  a 
good  deal  of  the  religion  of  humanity  about  these,  isn't 
there? 

And  other  laws  come  in  here  and  there  with  such  a  kind 
consideration  for  poverty  and  need.  When  a  man  har- 
vested he  must  not  reap  the  corners  of  his  field,  nor  gather 
up  the  gleanings,  and  if  he  forgot  a  sheaf  and  left  it  in  the 
field  he  must  not  go  again  and  fetch  it.  "  Thou  shalt  leave 
them  for  the  poor  and  the  stranger."  And  this:  "  When  a 
man  hath  taken  a  new  wife  he  shall  not  go  out  to  war? 
neither  shall  he  be  charged  with  any  business;  but  he  shall 
be  free  at  home  one  year  and  shall  cheer  up  his  wife  whom 
he  hath  taken."  And  even  in  regard  to  war — in  which  cer- 
tainly they  were  fierce  enough — what  a  gleam  of  kindness 
comes  in  in  that  command  that  when  they  were  besieging  a 
city  they  must  not  cut  down  the  fruit  trees  about  it  for 
their  war  purposes,  but  only  trees  that  they  knew  were  not 
for  fruit.     Why,  I  might  go  on  for  an  hour  quoting  these 


52  MISTAKES  OF  INGERSOLL. 

more  merciful  laws  and  showing  you  the  large,  grand 
thoughts  of  duty  that  pervade  that  whole  system  which  the 
Jews  believed  had  been  given  to  them  by  Moses. 

But  there  is  nothing  really  to  fear.  For  the  moment 
many  may  be  led  to  throw  the  Bible  away,  and  to  give  up 
religion  as  the  weak  nonsense  he  so  scornfully  proclaims  it. 
Religion  will  abide  in  the  heart  of  man.  And  the  Bible 
will  stand  because  in  it  we  have  the  accumulated  utterance 
of  religion  in  its  best  beginnings  and  along  its  noblest  line 
of  development. 


THE  JEWISH  RABBVS  REPLY.  53 


THE  JEWISH  EABBI'S  EEPLY, 


We  need  not  pray  for  Col.  Robert  Ingersoll's  soul,  for  he 
says  lie  has  none;  and  in  this  instance  we  are  bound  to  be- 
lieve him,  as  he  is  judge,  jury  and.  witness  in  the  case;  and 
there  may  be  men  without  souls,  as  there  are  some  without 
conscience,  others  without  reason,  and  quite  a  number  with- 
out principle.  The  first  man  of  whom  the  Bible  says  that 
he  prayed,  was  Abraham.  He  prayed  for  Abimelech.  But 
Col.  Ingersoll,  we  suspect,  is  not  smitten  with  that  disease. 
He  prayed  for  the  wicked  people  of  Sodom  and  Gomorrah, 
to  which  class  belongs  no  American  citizen,  of  course,  as 
"  Mitchell's  Geography"  substantially  proves.  Jacob  prayed 
when  his  brother  Esau  approached  him  with  an  armed  force; 
and  the  Colonel  has  come  to  us  unarmed,  and  without  any 
force  except  a  few  harmless  agents  of  the  Boston  Lecture 
Bureau,  who  take  the  money,  show  the  show,  and  depart  in 
peace.  Moses  prayed  for  his  sister  Miriam  when  she  was 
leprous,  but  Mr.  Ingersoll  is  no  woman,  and  his  excellent 
exterior  betokens  no  leprosy.  Joshua  prayed  to  make  the 
sun  and  moon  stand  still,  but  Mr.  Ingersoll  is  neither  the 
greater  nor  the  lesser  light,  and  to  the  best  of  our  knowledge 
nobody  wants  him  to  stand  still  at  any  place. 

Speaking  of  imagination,  it  reminds  me  that  Col.  Inger- 
soll said  he  could  not  imagine  the  existence  of  a  God.  Im- 
agine  God!  Any  professor  of  philosophy  would  faint  if  he 
was  told  that  illogical  expression.     How  can  God  be  im- 


54  MISTAKES  OF  IXGERSOLL. 

agined?  Perhaps  one  of  Mr.  Ingersoll's  manufactured  gods 
could  be  imagined  in  a  disorderly  imagination,  as  only  phys- 
ical objects  of  nature  or  combinations  thereof  could  be  im- 
agined— nothing  else.  What  kind  of  a  god  would  that  be 
which  could  be  submitted  to  the  imagination  of  a  man  with- 
out a  soul?  It  must  be  the  miniature  or  pocket  edition  of 
an  idol,  made  by  man,  such  as  Col.  Ingersoll  purchases  and 
exhibits  to  amuse  tall  babies.  It  must  be  that  sort  of  far- 
cical gods  which  he  describes  in  his  burlesques.  He  is  not 
the  first  quack  who  would  not  take  his  own  medicines, 
although  he  is  certainly  among  reasoners  the  first  who  would 
imagine  Deity,  for  none  tries  to  imagine  that  which  reason 
only  can  grasp;  none  will  permit  himself  to  be  led  astray 
by  imagination  where  pure  reflection  only  can  reach  the 
aim. 

The  perversion  of  ideas  springs  from  a  mistake  about 
Moses.  A  god  or  gods  have  been  fabricated  at  the  expense 
of  Moses,  until  each  little  priest  had  his  own  snug  little  god 
that  could  be  used  as  the  Crusader's  emblem  or  the  license 
of  the  auto-da-fe,  to  massacre  and  glut  in  human  gore,  or 
the  frail  woman's  last  resort  of  love  to  make  honest  men 
out  of  rogues,  pure  souls  out  of  the  dregs  of  hell.  The  god 
or  gods  variously  depicted,  miscellaneously  described,  and 
promiscuously  applied  become  objects  of  imagination,  hence 
also  of  the  farce.  The  mistake  is  that  Moses  was  charged 
with  all  the  follies  of  theological  jugglers  and  sophistical 
bummers.  The  God  whom  Moses  taught  is  emphatically 
the  God  whom  no  man  can  see  and  live, — the  Great  I  Am, 
who  is  the  I,  the  Ego,  the  Subject  of  the  Universe,  the  law, 
the  life,  the  love  and  the  intellect  of  the  cosmos,  the  Eternal 
Jehovah,  essence  itself,  and  the  absolute  substance,  in  whom 
all  things  are  as  all  objects  of  a  man's  tender  love  are  in  his 
soul,  of  whom  all  things  came  and  into  whom  all  return. 
This  is  not  a  God  fabricated  by  man,  hence  He  could  not 


THE  JEWISH  RABBI'S  REPLY,  55 

be  imagined  by  man,  as  no  man  can  imagine  a  being  supe- 
rior to  himself.  This  is  the  God  taught  by  Moses;  the  other 
gods  may  be  subjected  to  farce  and  ribaldry,  while  the  true 
Deity  is  too  sublime  even  for  the  pyrotechnical  displays  of 
Mr.  Ingersoll's  disentangled  humor.  It  is  a  mistake  about 
Moses  which  feeds  his  boiler  to  tweedle  the  rusted  think- 
apparatus  of  twaddlers.  The  God  of  Moses  is  too  great  for 
Mr.  Ingersoll;  he  only  deals  in  gods  which  can  be  imag- 
ined, and  in  speaking  of  mistakes  of  Moses  he  reverently 
passes-  by  the  God  of  Moses.  The  man  is  not  as  bad  as  his 
reputation. 

I  maintain  that  Col.  Robert  Ingersoll  is  not  half  as  bad 
as  his  reputation.  The  man  was  persecuted  by  his  country- 
men, was  defeated  in  his  political  aspirations  by  church- 
members,  and  thinks  the  Presbyterians  have  done  it.  He 
is  a  man  of  prominent  talents,  belonging  to  the  better  class; 
all  on  account  of  the  Presbyterians,  he  was  teased,  perse- 
cuted, and  wounded  in  his  pride,  and  so  he  became  a  public 
lecturer.  But  business  is  business;  if  one  wants  to  make 
money  he  must  know  how.  He  could  imagine  that  people 
go  to  the  circus  to  see  the  clown,  to  the  theater  to  laugh 
over  the  comedian.  People  want  fun  to  be  amused,  alcohol 
to  force  the  blood  to  the  brain,  to  fill  up  the  vacuum.  He 
could  see  that  earnest  men  who  reason  on  principles  would 
not  take  with  the  masses.  Aware  of  his  own  talents  as  a 
humorist  and  an  orator,  of  the  scarcity  of  humorists  in  this 
country,  and  the  plenitude  of  slang,  low  comedy,  and  uncul- 
tivated taste,  he  could  only  choose  the  career  which  he  did 
choose — a  career  of  ribaldry,  to  laugh  over  everything  holy, 
to  sneer  alike  at  human  follies,  frailties,  virtue  and  piety; 
and  as  a  business  man  he  has  chosen  well — he  makes  plenty 
of  money  and  hurts  nobody.  A  moral  effect  he  will  never 
have  upon  anybody,  because  there  is  no  moral  force  in  his 
burlesque.     He  is  no  Thomas  Paine,  Thomas  Jefferson,  no 


56  MISTAKES  OF  INGERSOLL. 

"Voltaire,  Strauss,  Feuerbach,  or  even  a  Heinrich  Heine, 
because  lie  lacks  the  research,  the  erudition,  the  systematical 
learning,  and  the  moral  backbone  of  either  of  them.  He 
will  not  set  Rome  on  fire  in  order  to  sing  from  his  balcony  the 
destruction  of  Trov;  he  lacks  the  fire  and  the  torch.  It  is 
all  pyrotechnical  ribaldry,  which  sweeps  away  many  a  con- 
sumptive superstition  and  laughs  many  a  prejudice  out  of 
existence;  but  truth  takes  care  of  itself.  Let  the  man 
alone;  he  is  better  than  his  reputation. 

You  think,  perhaps,  I  ought  to  be  very  angry,  because 
the  gentleman  spoke  of  the  mistakes  of  Moses,  and  ridiculed 
the  great  lawgiver  of  the  Jews.  Let  me  tell  you  first,  any- 
thing over  which  you  laugh  leaves  no  particular  impression 
behind.  That  which  goes  not  though  the  avenues  of  reason 
or  the  depth  of  the  moral  sentiment  in  a  short  time  proves 
effectless.  Scorn  is  a  terrible  weapon  to  achieve  moment- 
ary success,  but  it  is  worse  than  worthless  after  a  second 
sober  thought  or  a  healthy  action  of  the  feelings.  Then  let 
me  say,  the  theology  of  Moses  is  certainly  beyond  the  reach 
of  Col.  Ingersoll,  for  he  is  no  reasoner;  he  can  spit,  but  he 
could  not  think  with  philosophical  minds.  He  never 
studied  through  or  even  read  any  of  the  philosophical 
systems  of  Germany,  England,  or  France;  nor  has  he  the 
ability  to  do  it.  He  is  no  naturalist  of  any  description,  has 
never  troubled  himself  about  any  specialty  thereof,  and  so 
he  talks  about  matters  and  things  in  general  as  is  the 
American  custom,  what  the  Germans  call  Wurst-pJiilosophie, 
good  enough  as  jokes  or  for  beer-house  reasonings.  When 
he  speaks  of  the  infinite  he  becomes  too  ludicrous  for  any- 
thing, especially  for  men  of  thought  to  make  anything  out 
of  it.     He  will  not  upset  the  theology  of  Moses. 

The  law  of  Moses  is  also  secured  against  the  Colonel's 
possible  attacks.  He  will  commence  no  trouble  with  his 
Blackstone  or  Hugo  Grotius,  or  the  other  writers  on  law 


THE  JEWISH  £  ABBES  REPLY.  57 

who  maintain  that  all  law  rests  upon  the  Mosaic  legisla- 
tion. 

Thirty-five  hundred  years  of  history,  and  the  common 
consent  of  the  civilized  world  at  this  end  of  the  nineteenth 
century,  are  a  little  too  much  for  any  man  to  upset.  He 
says  he  could  write  a  better  Decalogue  than  Moses  did,  but 
that  is  said  only — he  is  not  going  to  do  it;  he  will  not  even 
add  a  category  of  law  to  the  ten. 

Well,  then,  if  he  is  not  the  man  to  attack  successfully  the 
theology  or  jurisprudence  of  Moses,  I  have  no  cause  to  ob- 
ject to  his  lectures.  He  ridicules  Bible  stories,  but  that 
concerns  literal] sts  only,  not  us.  If  all  the  stories  of  the 
Pentateuch  be  ridiculed,  denied,  or  otherwise  disposed  of,  it 
does  not  change  an  iota  in  the  jurisprudence  or  theology  of 
Moses.  Let  the  literalists  take  up  that  part;  it  does  not 
concern  us  so  very  much. 

Here,  again,  is  a  point  which  makes  me  feel  bad  and  badly 
disposed  to  the  eloquent  humorist.  Why  does  he  continu- 
ally repeat  that  which  others  have  said  often  before  him; 
why  does  he  not  hit  upon  something  original?  He  re- 
hearses old  rags  in  new  shoddy,  and  that  is  unworthy  of  a 
man  who  has  any  pride  about  him.  He  does  sometimes 
worse  than  that;  he  ignores  his  opponents,  which  no  honest 
man  must  do.  He  speaks  a  long  yarn  about  the  history  of 
creation,  always  assuming  an  air  of  originality,  without 
having  the  honesty  of  mentioning  even  Dr.  J.  W.  Dawson's 
work,  "  The  Origin  of  the  World,"  which  upsets  his  whole 
twaddle.  It  is  dishonest  to  make  people  believe  that  a 
thing  said  is  indisputable,  when  it  has  been  completely 
upset. 

He  appeals  to  the  apotheosis  of  labor  to  impeach  Moses, 
because  it  said  in  the  Genesis  that  God  cursed  man.  "  In 
the  sweat  of  thy  brow  shalt  thou  eat  bread;"  and  labor  is  a 
blessing  to  man.     Did  all  Socialists  clap  hands?     If  not; 


58  MISTAKES  OF  INGERSOLL. 

some  must  have  thought  this  is  the  language  of  a  dema- 
gogue, who  is  either  a  hypocrite  or  a  self-deluded  man.  La- 
bor and  hard  labor  are  two  different  things,  and  the  "  sweat 
of  thy  brow"  points  to  hard  labor,  which  rests  like  a  curse 
upon  the  poor  man,  and  is  the  severest  punishment  imposed 
on  the  criminal  condemned  to  hard  labor. 

He  talks  about  the  creation  of  woman  like  an  ignorant 
man  who  has  not  the  remotest  idea  of  the  difficulties  among 
biologists,  considering  the  differentiation  of  man  and  the 
origin  of  sexes.  So  he  talks  about  the  littleness  of  the  ark 
and  smites  Charles  Darwin  in  the  face,  instead  of  saying 
this  proves  Darwin's  theory  on  the  origin  of  species.  He 
scoffs  at  the  God  who  destroyed  His  own  children  and 
undertakes  to  teach  the  Colonel  of  Peoria  how  he  should 
educate  his.  It  all  depends  upon  what  kind  of  children  one 
wishes  to  bring  up.  Usually  every  parent  brings  up  his  own 
kind.  God  wanted  them  to  bring  up  God-like  children,  and 
when  they  would  not  do  it,  he  got  them  out  of  the  way  in 
preference  to  destroying  human  freedom  or  perpetuating 
wickedness.  If  it  is  only  to  bring  up  such  children  as  Rob- 
ert Ingersoll,  of  Peoria,  111.,  no  such  stringency  is  necessary. 
Musquashes  grow  spontaneously  in  abundance.  Then  he 
speaks  about  600  pigeons  a  day  for  three  priests,  and  does 
not  know  that  there  were  no  pigeons  in  the  wilderness,  and 
the  Mosaic  sacrificial  polity  was  not  introduced  till  Joshua 
had  taken  the  Land  of  Canaan,  and  then  there  were  more 
priests  than  there  are  to-day  humorists  in  America,  for 
Joshua  gave  them  quite  a  number  of  cities,  and  I  would 
not  be  astonished  if  those  American  humorists  could  eat 
more  pigeons  than  they  can  do  good  in  this  world. 

But  what  is  the  use  to  speak  of  the  mistakes  of  Moses? 
Speak  of  the  mistakes  about  Moses.  Did  Moses  write  the 
Genesis?  Says  Col.  Ingersoll,  "I  do  not  know;"  and  he 
does  not  know  a  great  many  other  things.    Did  Moses  write 


THE  JEWISH  RABBI'S  REPLY.  59 

the  historical  portions  of  the  Pentateuch?  Says  the  Illinois 
Colonel  again,  "I  do  not  know."  If  he  has  written  all  that, 
did  the  translators  and  commentators  which  the  Colonel 
read  represent  correctly  the  ideas  of  Moses?  "  Do  n't  know," 
sa}7s  the  Colonel.  If  those  writers  do  represent  the  matter 
correctly,  have  those  points  which  the  Colonel  ridicules 
never  been  discussed  and  refuted?  "Do  n't  know,"  says  the 
Colonel;  and  decent  men  must  not  curse;  still  they  are 
permitted  to  say,  "Why  do  you  talk  of  matters  of  which  you 
know  so  preciously  little?  That  is  all  excusable,  however, 
in  this  case.  The  humorous  and  eloquent  gentleman  is  out 
on  a  lecture  tour,  and  wants  to  succeed.  This  can  be  done 
by  reckless  ribaldry  only.  It  makes  no  difference  whether 
Sell  or  gods,  Devil  or  Moses,  Pope  or  Presbyterian  church 
— anything  that  will  pay  must  be  pressed  into  the  service. 
The  Colonel's  field  is  small;  he  has  no  great  choice  of  sub- 
jects, and  he  must  take  the  first  best  to  ridicule  it  and 
make  it  pay.  He  has  that  particular  talent,  and  could  not 
do  the  same  work  in  another  field.  He  cannot  criticise 
Aristotle  and  Emanuel  Kant  and  make  it  pay,  because  he 
cannot  read  them.  He  cannot  ridicule  Carlyle  or  Stuart 
Mill,  because  he  cannot  understand  them.  So  he  picks  up 
some  small  stories  which  the  children  know,  and  dishes  them 
up  in  his  own  humoristic  way  for  the  amusement  of  big 
babies.  The  man  understands  his  business  to  the  T.  I 
tell  you,  he  is  not  as  bad  as  his  reputation.  I  beg  a  thou- 
sand pardons  of  Col.  Robert  Ingersoll  if  I  have  wronged 
him.     I  did  not  mean  to  make  fun  of  him  any  way. 


[Photographed  by  Moebcr.] 


DR.  GIBSON'S  REPLY.  61 


DE  GIBSON'S  KEPLY.* 


Unhappily,  the  attention  of  Bible  students  has  been  al- 
most exclusively  directed  to  certain  difficulties.  These  dif- 
ficulties all  arise,  as  it  seems  to  me,  from  three  sources,  and 
the  Bible  is  not  to  blame  for  any  of  them.  First  source: 
treating  the  passage  as  if  it  were  history,  whereas  it  is  apoc- 
alypse. Second  source:  taking  it  as  intended  to  teach  sci- 
ence, especially  astronomical  and  geological  science.  Third 
source  of  difficulty:  the  mistakes  of  translators.  For  exam- 
ple, the  unfortunate  word  firmament  continually  comes  to 
the  front  as  one  of  the  "  mistakes  of  Moses."  Strange  that 
a  Latin  word  should  be  a  mistake  of  Moses!  Did  Moses 
know  Latin?  Did  he  ever  write  the  letters  f,  i,  r,  m,  etc.? 
Not  only  is  the  word  "firmament"  not  in  the  Hebrew 
Bible,  but  it  does  not  represent  the  Hebrew  word  at  all. 
The  word  firmament  means  something  strong,  solid.  The 
Hebrew  word  for  which  it  is  an  unfortunate  translation, 
signifies  something  that  is  very  thin,  extended,  spread  out; 
just  the  best  word  that  could  be  chosen  to  signify  the  at- 
mosphere. 

Then  there  is  the  word  "  whales,"  that  Professor  Huxley 
made  so  merry  over  a  year  ago.  But  the  Hebrew  does  not 
say  whales.  The  Hebrew  word  refers  to  great  sea  monsters, 
and  is  just  the  very  best  word  the  Hebrew  language  affords 
to  describe  such  animals  as  the  plesiosaurus  and  ichthyo- 
saurus and  other  creatures  that  abounded  in  the  time  prob- 

*Portions  of  this  reply  recentlv  appeared  in  the  daily  press  signed  "Candok;" 
other  portions  were  selected  by  the  Editor  from  his  new  work,  just  published  by 
Randolph  &  Co.,  New  York,  entitled  "The  Ages  Before  Moses." 


62  MISTAKES  OF  INGERSOLL. 

ably  referred  to  there.  Let  us  only  guard  against  these 
three  sources  of  error,  and  we  shall  not  find  many  diffi- 
culties. If  we  would  only  avoid  the  mistakes  of  Moses' 
critics,  we  would  not  show  our  ignorance  by  talking  about 
the  mistakes  of  Moses. 

We  have  said  that  almost  everybody  knows  about  the 
difficulties,  but  how  few  are  there  comparatively  that  know 
about  the  wonderful  harmonies?  So  much  is  said  and  writ- 
ten about  the  difficulties,  that  many  have  the  idea  that  the 
narrative  is  full  of  difficulties — nothing  but  difficulties  in  it 
— nothing  that  agrees  with  science  as  we  know  it  now; 
whereas,  when  we  look  at  it,  we  find  the  correspondencies 
most  wonderful  all  the  way  through.  Let  us  look  at  a  few 
of  them.  And  first,  the  absence  of  dates.  The  fact  is  very 
noteworthy  that  there  is  such  abundance  of  space  left  for  the 
long  periods,  not  till  quite  recently  demanded  by  science. 
And  this  does  not  depend  on  any  theory  of  day -periods;  for 
those  who  still  hold  to  the  literal  days,  find  all  the  room  re- 
quired before  the  first  day  is  mentioned.  JSTot  six  thousand 
years  ago,  but  "  in  the  beginning."  How  grand  and  how 
true  in  its  vagueness. 

Another  negative  characteristic  worth  noticing  here  is  the 
absence  of  details  where  none  are  needed.  For  example, 
there  is  almost  nothing  said  in  detail  about  the  heavens. 
What  is  said  about  the  heavens  in  addition  to  the  bare  fact 
of  creation,  is  only  in  reference  to  the  earth,  as,  for  exam- 
ple, when  the  sun  and  moon  are  treated  of,  not  as  separate 
worlds,  but  only  in  their  relation  to  this  earth  as  giving 
light  to  it  and  affording  measurements  of  time.  There  is 
no  attempt  to  drag  in  the  spectroscope! 

Ingersoll  Betrays  His  Ignorance. 

A  certain  infidel  lately  seemed  to  think  he  had  made  a 
point  against  the  Bible  by  remarking  that  the  author  of  it 


DR.  GIBSON'S  REPLY.  63 

had  compressed  tlie  astronomy  of  the  universe  into  five 
words.  Just  think  of  the  ignorance  this  betrays.  It  pro- 
ceeds on  the  assumption  that  the  author  of  this  apocalypse 
intended  to  teach  the  world  the  astronomy  of  the  universe; 
and  then,  of  course,  it  would  have  been  a  very  foolish  thing 
for  him  to  discuss  the  whole  subject  in  five  words.  Whereas, 
in  this  very  reticence  we  have  a  note  of  truth.  If  this  work 
had  been  the  work  of  some  mere  cosmogonist,  some  theo- 
rist as  to  the  origin  of  the  universe,  he  would  have  been  sure 
to  have  given  us  a  great  deal  of  information  about  the  stars. 
But  a  prophet  of  the  Lord  has  nothing  to  do  with  astrono- 
my as  such.  All  that  he  has  to  do  with  the  stars  is  to  make 
it  clear  that  the  most  distant  orbs  of  light  are  included  in 
the  domain  of  the  Great  Supreme,  and  this  he  can  do  as  well 
in  five  words  as  in  five  thousand;  and  so,  wisely  avoiding 
all  detail,  he  simply  says,  "  He  made  the  stars  also."  There 
was  danger  that  men  might  suppose  some  power  resident 
in  these  distant  stars  distinct  from  the  power  that  ruled  the 
earth.  He  would  have  them  to  understand  that  the  same 
God  that  rules  over  this  little  earth,  rules  to  the  uttermost 
bounds  of  the  great  universe.  And  this  great  truth  he  lays 
on  immovable  foundations  by  the  sublimely  simple  words, 
"  He  made  the  stars  also."  But  passing  from  that  which 
is  merely  negative,  see  how  many  positive  harmonies  there 

are. 

Harmony  of  Science  and  Genesis. 

First,  there  is  the  fact  of  a  beginning.  The  old  infidel 
objection  used  to  be  that  u  all  things  have  continued  as  they 
were  from  the  beginning  of  the  creation."  Nobody  pre- 
tends to  take  that  position  now  that  science  points  so  clearly 
to  beginnings  of  everything.  You  can  trace  back  man  to 
his  beginning  in  the  geological  cycles.  You  can  trace  back 
mammals  to  their  beginning;  birds,  fishes,  insects  to  their 
beginnings;  vegetation   to   its    beginning;  rocks   to   their 


64  MISTAKES  OF  INGERSOLL. 

beginning.     The   general   fact  of  a  genesis  is  immovably 
established  by  science. 

Secondly,  "  The  heavens  and  the  earth."  ISTote  the  order 
Though  almost  nothing  is  said  about  the  heavens,  yet  what 
is  said  is  not  at  all  in  conflict  with  what  we  now  know  about 
them.  We  know  now  that  the  earth  is  not  the  center  of 
the  universe.  Look  forward  to  Genesis  iv.  2,  and  you  will 
find  the  transition  to  the  reverse  order — quite  appropriate 
there,  as  we  shall  see  in  the  next  lecture;  but  here,  where 
the  genesis  of  all  things,  the  origin  of  the  universe,  is  the 
subject,  it  is  not  the  earth  and  the  heavens,  but  "  in  the 
beginning  God  created  the  heavens  and  the  earth." 

Thirdly,  there  is  the  original  chaos.  "  The  earth  was 
without  form  and  void."  Turn  to  the  early  pages  of  any 
good  modern  scientific  book,  that  attempts  to  set  forth  the 
genesis  of  the  earth  from  a  scientific  standpoint,  and  you 
will  find  just  this  condition  described.  Observe,  too,  in 
passing,  how  carefully  the  statement  is  limited  to  the  earth. 
The  universe  was  not  chaotic  then. 

Fourthly,  the  work  of  creation  is  not  a  simultaneous,  but 
an  extended  one.  If  the  author  had  been  guessing  or 
theorizing,  he  would  have  been  much  more  likely  to  hit  on 
the  idea  of  simultaneous,  than  successive  creation.  But  the 
idea  of  successive  creation  is  now  proved  by  science  to  be 
true. 

Fifthly,  there  is  a  progressive  development,  and  yet  not 
a  continuous  progression  without  any  drawbacks.  There 
are  evenings  and  mornings;  just  what  science  tells  us  of 
the  ages  of  the  past.  Here  it  is  worth  while  perhaps  to 
notice  the  careful  use  of  the  word  "  created."  An  objec- 
tion has  been  made  to  the  want  of  continuity  in  the  so-called 
orthodox  doctrine  of  creation,  the  orthodox  doctrine  being 
supposed  to  be  that  of  fresh  creation  at  every  point.  But 
the  Bible  is  not  responsible   for  many  "  fresh   creations." 


DR.  GIBSON'S  REPLY.  65 

The  word  "created  "  is  only  used  three  times  in  the  record. 
First,  as  applied  to  the  original  creation  of  the  universe, 
possibly  in  the  most  embryonic  state.  "  In  the  beginning 
God  created  the  heavens  and  the  earth."  Next,  in  connec- 
tion with  the  introduction  of  life  (v.  2),  and  last,  in  refer- 
ence to  the  creation  of  man  (v.  27).  In  no  other  place  is 
anything  said  about  direct  creation.  It  is  rather  making, 
appointing,  ordering,  saying  "  Let  there  be."  "  Let  the 
waters  bring  forth,"  etc.  Now,  is  it  not  a  significant  fact 
that  these  three  points  where,  and  where  alone,  the  idea  of 
absolute  creation  is  introduced,  are  just  the  three  points  at 
which  the  great  apostles  of  continuity  find  it  impossible  to 
make  their  connections?  You  will  not  find  any  one  that  is 
able  to  show  any  other  origin  for  the  spirit  of  man  than  the 
Creator  Himself.  You  cannot  find  any  one  that  is  able  to 
show  any  other  origin  of  animal  life  than  the  Creator  Him- 
self. There  have  been  very  strenuous  efforts  made  a  great 
many  times  to  show  that  the  living  may  originate  from  the 
not-living;  but  all  these  efforts  have  failed.  And  the  origin 
of  matter  is  just  as  mysterious  as  the  origin  of  life.  No 
other  origin  can  be  even  conceived  of  the  primal  matter  of 
the  universe  than  the  fiat  of  the  great  Creator.  Thus  we 
find  the  word  "creation"  used  just  at  the  times  when 
modern  science  tells  us  it  is  most  appropriate. 

Sixthly,  the  progression  is  from  the  lower  to  the  higher. 
An  inventor  would  have  been  much  more  likely  to  guess 
that  man  was  created  first,  and  afterward  the  other  creatures 
subordinate  to  him.  But  the  record  begins  at  the  bottom 
of  the  scale  and  goes  up,  step  by  step,  to  the  top:  again, 
just  what  geology  tells  us.  All  these  are  great  general 
correspondencies;  but  we  might, 

Seventhly,  go  into  details  and  find  harmonies  even  there, 
all  the  way  through.  Take  the  fact  of  light  appearing  on 
the  first  day.     The  Hebrew  word  for  "  light  "  is  wide  enough 


66  MISTAKES  OF  INGERSOLL. 

to  cover  the  associated  phenomena  of  heat  and  electricity, 
and  are  not  these  the  primal  forces  of  the  universe?  Again, 
it  used  to  be  a  standard  difficulty  with  sceptics  that  light 
was  said  to  exist  before  the  sun  was  visible  from  the  earth. 
Science  here  has  come  to  the  rescue,  and  who  doubts  it  now? 
It  is  very  interesting  to  see  a  distinguished  geologist  like 
Dana  using  this  very  fact  that  light  is  said  to  have  existed 
before  the  sun  shone  upon  the  earth  as  a  proof  of  the  divine 
origin  of  this  document,  on  the  ground  that  no  one  would 
havre  guessed  what  must  have  seemed  so  unlikely  then.  So 
much  for  the  progress  toward  the  Bible  which  science  has 
made  since  the  day  when  a  sceptical  writer  said  of  the 
Mosaic  narrative,  "  It  would  still  be  correct  enough  in  great 
principles  were  it  not  for  one  individual  oversight  and  one 
unlucky  blunder! " — the  oversight  being  the  solid  firmament 
(whose  oversight?),  and  the  blunder,  light  apart  from  the 
sun  (whose  blunder?). 

I  have  spoken  already  about  the  words  "created"  and 
"  made,"  in  relation  to  the  discriminating  use  of  them. 
This  word  raqia,  too,  how  admirable  it  is  to  express  the 
tenuity  of  our  atmosphere,  especially  as  contrasted  with  the 
clumsy  words  used  by  the  enlightened  Greeks  (stereoma) 
the  noble  Romans  (firmamentum),  and  even  by  learned 
Englishmen  of  the  nineteenth  century  (firmament)!  And 
not  to  dwell  on  mere  words,  as  we  well  might,  look  at  the 
general  order  of  creation:  vegetation  before  animal  life, 
birds  and  fishes  before  mammals,  and  all  the  lower  animals 
before  man.  Is  not  that  just  the  order  you  find  in  geology? 
More  particularly,  while  man  is  last  he  is  not  created  on  a 
separate  day.  •  He  comes  in  on  the  sixth  day  along  with  the 
higher  animals,  yet  not  in  the  beginning,  but  toward  the 
close  of  the  period.     Again,  just  what  geology  tells  us. 


DR.  GIBSON'S  REPLY.  67 

The  Harmony  of  Genesis  and   Science,  not  the   Result  of 
Guess  Work,  but  of  Inspiration. 

These  are  only  some  of  the  many  wonderful  harmonies 
between  this  old  revelation  and  modern  science.  I  would 
like  to  see  the  doctrine  of  chances  applied  to  this  problem, 
to  determine  what  probability  there  would  be  of  a  mere 
guesser  or  inventor  hitting  upon  so  many  things  that  cor- 
respond with  what  modern  science  reveals.  I  don't  believe 
there  would  be  one  chance  in  a  million!  Is  it  not  far 
harder  for  a  sensible  man  to  believe  that  this  wonderful 
apocalypse  is  the  fruit  of  ignorance  and  guess-work,  than 
that  it  is  the  product  of  inspiration?  It  is  simply  absurd  to 
imagine  that  an  ignorant  man  could  have  guessed  so  hap- 
pily. Nay,  more.  Let  any  of  the  scientific  men  of  to-day 
set  themselves  down  to  write  out  a  history  of  creation  in  a 
space  no  larger  than  that  occupied  by  the  first  chapter  of 
Genesis  and  I  do  not  believe  they  could  improve  on  it  at  all. 
And  if  they  did  succeed  in  producing  anything  that  would 
pass  for  the  present,  in  all  probability  in  ten  years  it  would 
be  out  of  date.  Our  apocalypse  of  creation  is  not  only  bet- 
ter than  could  be  expected  of  an  uninspired  man  in  the 
days  of  the  world's  ignorance,  but  it  is  better  than  Tyndall, 
or  Huxley,  or  Haeckel  could  do  yet.  If  they  think  not,  let 
them  take  a  single  sheet  of  paper  and  try! 

It  is  of  great  importance  to  remember  that  the  sym- 
bolism attaches  to  the  form,  and  not  to  the  substance  of  the 
history.  To  call  this  whole  story  of  the  Fall  a  mere  alle- 
gory, is  to  take  away  from  it  all  historical  reality.  Let  us 
distinguish  carefully  between  the  reality  of  the  history, 
which  is  a  very  important  thing,  and  the  literality  of  it, 
which  is  of  minor  importance.  It  is  very  unfortunate  that 
so  much  time  is  often  spent  upon  the  mere  letter,  regardless 
of  the  warning  of  the  great  apostle:     "The  letter  killeth, 


C8  MISTAKES  OF  INGERSOLL. 

but  the  spirit  giveth  life.  This  accounts  for  nine-tenths  of 
the  difficulties  people  have  about  it.  Suppose  a  person, 
seeing  a  cocoanut  for  the  first  time,  and  being  told  it  was 
good  for  food,  should  spend  all  his  time  gnawing  away  at 
the  shell,  and  never  get  at  the  kernel.  No  wonder  of  his 
verdict  should  be,  it  is  not  fit  to  eat.  So  jou  will  find  that 
most  of  the  people  who  have  insuperable  difficulties  with 
the  Bible  are  those  who  are  busying  themselves  all  the  time 
about  the  shell  and  never  get  hold  of  the  kernel.  If  they 
could  only  seize  the  kernel  they  would  so  readily  see  the 
beauty  and  enjoy  the  taste,  and  find  the  use  of  it;  and  then, 
perhaps,  they  would  begin  to  see  some  beauty  and  some 
usefulness  in  the  shell  too.  "  The  letter  killeth,  but  the 
Spirit  giveth  life." 

A  very  good  illustration  of  this  is  found  in  the  fifteenth 
verse  of  the  third  chapter,  where  we  read  about  "  the  seed 
of  the  woman  bruising  the  head  of  the  serpent."  The  liter- 
alists  get  nothing  more  out  of  it  than  a  declaration  that  in 
time  to  come  serpents  will  annoy  the  descendants  of  Eve  by 
biting  at  their  heels,  and  on  the  other  hand,  the  descendants 
of  Eve  will  destroy  serpents  by  crushing  their  heads!  The 
mere  shell  of  the  thing  manifestly.  The  reality,  as  pictured 
there,  is  of  a  great  conflict  to  go  on  throughout  all  these 
ages  of  development;  a  great  conflict  between  the  forces  of 
good  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  forces  of  evil  on  the  other. 
Of  this  conflict  the  issue  is  not  doubtful.  There  is  to  be 
serious  trouble  all  the  while  from  the  forces  of  evil,  but  in 
the  end  these  forces  will  be  crushed.  There  is  One  coming 
— a  descendant  of  this  same  woman,  called  here  "  the  seed 
of  the  woman" — who  will  at  last  "bruise  the  head  of  the 
serpent,"  and  gain  the  victory,  and  bring  in  that  glorious 
era  when  sin  and  suffering  and  pain  and  death  shall  have 
all  rolled  away  into  the  past.  There  is  a  great  deal  more 
than  this  in  that  wonderful  verse — more  than  we  would 


DR.  GIBSON'S  REPLY.  69 

have  time  to  tell  though  we  spent  a  whole  hour  on  it.  "We 
only  refer  to  it  now  as  an  illustration. 

And  now,  what  matters  it  whether  you  take  the  "  ser- 
pent "  that  tempted  Eve  to  be  a  real  and  literal  serpent,  or 
the  mere  (phenomenal)  form  of  a  serpent  assumed  by  the 
Spirit  of  Evil  for  the  purpose?  or  even  whether  the  serpent 
form  is  connected  with  the  old  style  of  pictorial  representa- 
tion? All  that  is  minor  and  subordinate.  There  is  no  use 
of  wasting  time  on  it.  All  we  want  to  be  sure  of  is  the 
truth,  that  there  was  a  tempter,  an  evil  spirit,  that  in  a 
seductive  form  tempted  our  first  parents  and  they  fell.  Let 
us  by  all  means  beware  of  allowing  our  time  to  be  frittered 
away  by  mere  trivial  questions  of  the  letter,  instead  of  mak- 
ing it  our  great  aim  to  see  and  to  seize  the  great  spiritual 
truths  set  forth  in  this  old  and  simple  record. 

There  are  many  who  represent  this  book  of  the  Genera- 
tions as  a  second  edition  of  the  Genesis,  or  separate  account 
of  the  creation ;  and  of  course  they  find  difficulty  in  compar- 
ing the  two.  All  their  difficulty,  as  we  shall  see,  comes  from 
their  not  understanding  the  passage  as  a  whole,  their  not 
perceiving  what  it  was  intended  to  teach.  It  will  help  us  to 
meet  this  difficulty  if  we  follow  the  same  order  of  ideas  as  in 
the  exposition  of  Genesis  i.,  viz.:  God,  Nature,  Man.  In  all 
we  shall  find  marked  differences.  But  these  differences,  in- 
stead of  presenting  any  difficulty,  will  have  their  reason 
made  abundantly  manifest. 

God. 

First,  then,  there  is  a  different  name  for  God  introduced 
here.  All  through  the  Genesis  it  has  been  "  God  said," 
"God  made,"  "  God  created."  Now  it  is  invariably,  "Je- 
hovah God  "  (Lord  God  in  our  version).  And  this  is  the 
only  continuous  passage  in  the  Bible  where  the  combination 
is  used.     How  is   this    explained?     Very  easily.     In  the 


70  MISTAKES  OF  INGERSOLL. 

apocalypse  of  the  Genesis,  God  makes  Himself  known  sim- 
ply as  Creator.  Sin  has  not  yet  entered,  and  so  the  idea  of 
salvation  has  no  place.  In  this  passage  sin  is  coming  in, 
and  along  with  it  the  promise  of  salvation.  Now  the  name 
Jehovah  is  always  connected  with  the  idea  of  salvation.  It 
is  the  covenant  name.  It  is  the  name  which  indicates 
God's  special  relation  to  His  people,  as  their  Saviour  and 
Bedeemer.  This  name  is  introduced  now,  because  God  is 
about  to  make  Himself  known  in  anew  character.  He  ap- 
peared in  Genesis  simply  as  Creator.  He  appears  now  in 
the  book  of  the  Generations  as  Bedeemer;  and  so  we  get 
the  name  Jehovah  in  place  of  the  name  God.  But  lest  any 
one  should  suppose  from  the  change  of  name  that  there  is 
any  change  in  the  person;  lest  any  one  suppose  that  He 
who  is  to  redeem  us  from  sin  and  death,  is  a  different  being 
from  Him  who  created  the  heavens  and  the  earth,  the  two 
names  are  now  combined — Jehovah  God.  The  combination 
is  retained  throughout  the  entire  narrative  of  the  Fall  to 
make  the  identification  sure.  Thereafter  either  name  is 
used  by  itself  without  danger  of  error. 

Nature. 

Look  next  at  the  way  in  which  Nature  is  spoken  of  here. 
When  you  look  at  it  aright,  you  find  there  is  no  repetition. 
Nature  in  the  Genesis  is  universal  nature.  God  created  all 
things.  But  here,  nature  comes  in,  as  it  has  to  do  immedi- 
ately with  Adam.  Now  see  the  effect  of  this.  It  at  once 
removes  difficulties,  which  many  speak  of  as  of  great  mag- 
nitude. 

In  the  first  place,  it  is  not  the  whole  earth  that  is  now 
spoken  of,  but  a  very  limited  district.  Our  attention  is 
narrowed  down  to  Eden,  and  the  environs  of  Eden,  a  limi- 
ted district  in  a  particular  part  of  the  earth.  Hence  the 
difficulty  about  there  not  being  rain  in  the  district  ("  earth") 


DR.  GIBSON'S  REPLY.  71 

disappears.  Let  me  here  remind  you  once  or  all  that  the 
Hebrew  word  for  earth  and  for  land  or  district  is  the  same. 
See  Gen.  xii.,  1.,  where  the  word  is  twice  used,  translated 
"country"  and  "land." 

Again,  it  is  not  the  vegetable  kingdom  as  a  whole  that  is 
referred  to  in  the  fifth  verse,  but  only  the  agricultural  and 
horticultural  products.  The  words  "plant,"  "field"  and 
"grew"  (v.  5)  are  new  words,  not  found  in  the  creation 
record.*  In  Gen.  i.  the  vegetable  kingdom  as  a  whole  was 
spoken  of.  Now,  it  is  simply  the  cereals  and  garden  herbs, 
and  things  of  that  sort;  and  here  instead  of  coming  into  col- 
lision with  the  previous  narrative,  we  have  something  that 
corresponds  with  what  botanists  tell  us,  that  field  and  gar- 
den products  are  sharply  distinguished  in  the  history  of 
nature  from  the  old  flora  of  the  geological  epochs. 

In  the  same  way  it  is  not  the  whole  animal  kingdom  that 
is  referred  to  in  verse  nineteen,  but  only  the  domestic  ani- 
mals, those  with  which  man  was  to  be  esj)ecially  associated, 
and  to  which  he  was  very  much  more  intimately  related 
than  to  the  wild  beasts  of  the  field.  It  may  be  easy  to 
make  this  narrative  look  ridiculous,  by  bringing  the  wild 
beasts  in  array  before  Adam,  as  if  any  companionship  with 
them  were  conceivable.  But  when  we  bear  in  mind  that 
reference  is  made  here  to  the  domestic  animals,  there  is 
nothing  at  all  inappropriate  in  noticing  that  while  there  is  a 
certain  degree  of  companionship  possible  between  man  and 
some  of  those  animals,  as  the  horse  and  dog,  yet  none  of 
these  was  the  companion  he  needed. 

In  the  first  chapter  of  Genesis,  nature  is  the  great  theme. 
We  are  carried  over  universal  nature,  and  the  great  truth  is 
there  set  forth,  that  God  has  created  all  things.  In  the  sec- 
ond chapter  of  Genesis,  man  is  the  great  theme,  and  conse- 


*  The  correct  translation  of  the  fifth  verse  is:     "  Now  no  plant  of  the 
field  was  yet  in  the  land,  and  no  herb  of  the  field  was  growing." 


72  MISTAKES  OF  INGEBSOLL. 

quently  nature  is  treated  of  only  as  it  circles  around  him, 
and  is  related  to  him.  This  sufficiently  accounts  for  the 
difference  between  the  two. 

Man. 

Passing  now  from  nature  to  Man,  we  find  again  a  marked 
difference.  In  Gen.  i.  we  are  told,  "  God  created  man  in 
His  own  image;  in  the  image  of  God  created  He  him." 
And  here:  "The  Lord  God  formed  man  of  the  dust  of  the 
ground."  (ii.  7.)  Some  people  tell  as  there  is  a  contra- 
diction here.  Is  there  any  contradiction,  let  me  ask?  Are 
not  both  of  them  true?  Is  there  not  something  that  tells 
you  that  there  is  more  than  dust  in  your  composition?  Is 
there  not  something  in  you  that  tells  you,  you  are  related 
to  God  the  Creator?  "When  you  hear  the  statement  that 
"  God  made  man  in  His  own  image,  is  there  not  a  response 
awakened  in  you — something  in  you  that  rises  up  and  says, 
It  is  true?  On  the  other  hand,  we  know  that  man's  body 
is  formed  of  the  dust  of  the  earth.  "We  find  it  to  be  true 
in  a  more  literal  sense  than  was  formerly  supposed,  now 
that  chemistry  discloses  the  fact  that  the  same  elements 
enter  into  the  composition  of  man's  body,  as  are  found  by 
analysis  in  the  "  dust  of  the  ground." 

And  not  only  are  both  these  statements  true,  but  each  is 
appropriate  in  its  place.  In  the  first  account,  when  man's 
place  in  universal  nature  was  to  be  set  forth — man  as  he 
issued  from  his  Maker's  hand — was  it  not  appropriate  that 
his  higher  nature  should  occupy  the  foreground?  His  lower 
relations  are  not  entirely  out  of  sight  even  there,  for  he  is 
introduced  along  with  a  whole  group  of  animals  created  on 
the  sixth  day.  But  while  his  connection  with  them  is  sug- 
gested, that  to  which  emphasis  is  given  in  the  Genesis  is 
his  relation  to  his  Maker.  But  now  that  we  are  going  to 
hear  about  his  fall,  about  his  shame  and  degradation,  is  it 


DR.  GIBSON'S  REPLY.  73 

not  appropriate  that  the  lower  rather  than  the  higher  part 
of  his  nature  should  be  brought  into  the  foreground,  inas- 
much as  it  is  there  that  the  danger  lies?  It  was  to  that  part 
of  his  nature  that  the  temptation  was  addressed;  and  so  we 
read  here,  "  God  formed  man  of  the  dust  of  the  ground." 
Yet  here,  too,  there  is  a  hint  of  his  higher  nature,  for  it  is 
added,  "  He  breathed  into  his  nostrils  the  breath  of  life," 
or  as  we  have  it  in  another  passage,  "  The  inspiration  of  the 
Almighty  gave  him  understanding." 

In  this  connection  it  is  worth  while  to  notice  the  use  of 
the  words  " created"  and  "formed."  "  God  created  man 
in  His  own  image."  So  far  as  man's  spiritual  and  immor- 
tal nature  was  concerned  it  was  a  new  creation.  On  the 
other  hand,  "  God  formed  man  out  of  the  dust  of  the 
ground."  We  are  not  told  He  created  man's  body  out  of 
nothing.  "We  are  told,  and  the  sciences  of  to-day  confirm 
it,  that  it  was  formed  out  of  existing  materials. 

"Woman. 

Then,  in  relation  to  Woman,  there  is  the  same  appropri- 
ateness in  the  two  narratives.  In  the  former  her  relations 
to  God  are  prominent:  "God  created  man  in  His  own  im- 
age. In  the  image  of  God  created  He  him ;  male  and  fe- 
male created  He  them  " — man  in  His  image;  woman  in  His 
image.  In  the  latter,  it  is  not  the  relation  of  woman  to 
her  Maker  that  is  brought  forward,  but  the  relation  of  wo- 
man to  her  husband.  Hence  the  specific  reference  to  her 
organic  connection  with  her  husband. 

Here,  again,  it  is  very  easy  for  one  that  deals  in  literali- 
ties  to  raise  difficulties,  forgetting  that  there  is  no  intention 
here  to  detail  scientifically  the  process  of  woman's  forma- 
tion,but  simply  to  indicate  that  she  is  organically  connected 
with  her  husband.  It  is  here  proper  to  remark  that  the  ren- 
dering "  rib "  is  probably  too  specific.     The  word  is  more 


74  MISTAKES  OF  INGEBSOLL. 

frequently  used  in  the  general  sense  of  "side."  As  an  ev- 
idence that  there  is  no  intention  to  give  here  any  physio- 
logical information  as  to  the  origin  of  woman,  we  may  refer 
to  the  words  of  Adam:  "This  is  now  bone  of  my  bone  and 
flesh  of  my  flesh.  She  shall  be  called  Woman,  because  she 
was  taken  out  of  man."  And  now,  is  there  anything  irra- 
tional in  the  idea  that  woman  should  be  formed  out  of  man? 
Is  there  anything  more  mysterious  or  inconceivable  in  the 
formation  of  woman  out  of  man,  than  in  the  original  form- 
ation of  man  out  of  dust?  Let  us  conceive  of  our  origin 
in  any  way  we  choose,  it  is  full  of  mystery.  Though  there 
may  be  mystery  connected  with  what  is  said  in  the  Bible, 
there  will  be  just  as  much  mystery  connected  with  any  other 
account  you  try  to  give  of  it.  Matthew  Henry,  in  his 
quaint  and  half-humorous  way,  really  gets  nearer  to  the 
true  spirit  of  the  narrative  than  any  physiological  inter- 
preter can,  when  he  makes  the  remark  that  some  of  you 
may  be  familiar  with,  "  that  woman  was  taken  out  of  man, 
not  out  of  his  head  to  top  him,  nor  out  of  his  feet  to  be 
trampled  underfoot;  but  out  of  his  side  to  be  equal  to  him, 
under  his  arm  to  be  protected,  and  near  his  heart  to  be 
beloved."  Another  remark  of  his  is  worth  quoting.  Ee- 
ferring  to  the  fact  of  Adam's  being  first  formed  and  then 
Eve,  and  the  claim  of  priority  and  consequent  superiority, 
as  made  on  his  behalf  by  the  apostle  Paul,  he  says:  "If 
man  is  the  head,  she  is  the  crown — a  crown  to  her  husband, 
the  crown  of  the  visible  creation.  The  man  was  dust  re- 
fined, but  the  woman  was  dust  double-refined — one  remove 
further  from  the  earth." 

But,  Matthew  Henry  apart,  one  thing  is  certain,  that  this 
old  Bible  narrative,  while  it  has  not  done  that  which  it  was 
never  intended  to  do,  while  it  has  given  no  scientific  expla- 
nation of  either  man's  origin  or  woman's  origin,  has  never- 
theless accomplished  its  great  object.     It  has  given  woman 


DR.  GIBSON'S  REPLY.  75 

her  true  place  in  the  world.  It  is  only  in  Bible  .lands  that 
woman  has  her  true  place;  and  it  is  only  there  that  marriage 
has  its  proper  sacredness.  Here  as  everywhere  else,  we  see 
the  practical  power  of  the  Bible.  It  was  not  written  to 
satisfy  curiosity,  but  to  save  and  to  bless;  and  most  salutary 
and  most  blessed  has  been  the  influenee  of  these  earliest 
words  about  woman,  setting  forth  her  true  relation  to  man 
and  to  God,  to  her  earthly  husband  and  her  heavenly  Father. 

Mistakes  Respecting  Labor   and  Death,    Corrected. 

.  .  .  The  Bible  has  been  charged  with  representing  labor 
as  a  curse.  The  charge  is  not  true.  On  the  contrary,  we  are 
told  that  Adam  was  appointed  in  Eden  to  dress  the  garden 
and  keep  it.  The  law  of  labor  came  in  among  the  blessings 
of  Eden,  along  with  the  law  of  obedience  and  the  marriage 
law.  It  is  a  slander  on  the  Bible  to  say  that  it  represents 
labor  as  a  curse.  It  is  not  the  labor  that  is  the  curse.  It  is 
the  thorns  and  the  thistles.  It  is  the  hardness  of  the  labor. 
"  In  the  sweat  of  thy  brow  thou  shalt  eat  bread."  Labor 
would  have  been  easy  and  pleasant  otherwise. 

Then  in  regard  to  death.  There  are  those  who  represent 
the  Bible  as  if  it  taught  that  death  was  unknown  in  the 
world  until  after  the  Fall.  And  then  they  point  us  to  the 
reign  of  death  throughout  the  epochs  of  geology  as  contra- 
dicting the  Bible.  Is"ow,  the  Bible  teaches  nothing  of  the 
kind.  On  the  contrary,  there  seems  rather  to  be  a  suggestion 
that  death  was  in  existence  among  the  lower  animals  all  the 
way  through.  Kot  to  speak  of  the  probability  that  one  of 
the  divisions  of  animals,  mentioned  in  the  first  chapter  of 
Genesis,  corresponds  with  the  carnivora,  is  there  not  some- 
thing in  the  way  the  subject  of  death  is  introduced,  which 
rather  suggests  the  idea  that  it  was  already  known?  It  was 
a  new  thing  to  Adam.  It  was  not  a  new  thing  to  animal 
life.     Man   had   been  created  with  relations  to  mortality 


76  MISTAKES  OF  INGERSOLL. 

below  him,  but  with  relations  also  to  immortality  above 
him.  Had  he  not  fallen,  his  immortal  nature  would  have 
ruled  his  destiny;  but  now  that  he  has  separated  himself 
from  God  by  his  sin,  his  lower  relations,  his  mortal  relations, 
must  rule  his  destiny.  Instead  of  having  as  his  destiny  the 
prospect  of  being  associated  with  God  in  a  happy  immor- 
tality, he  is  degraded  from  that  position,  and  is  henceforth 
associated  with  the  animals  in  their  mortality.  We  are  told 
that  "  death  passed  upon  all  men,  because  all  have  sinned." 
But  you  do  not  find  a  passage  in  the  Bible  asserting  that 
death  passed  upon  the  animals  because  of  man's  sin. 

The  Deluge  and  its  Difficulties  —  Not  Universal  —  Ararat 

Originally  a  District  (Alas !   Ingersoll  Calls  it  a  High 

Mountain) — Other  Deluges. 

.  .  .  We  must  here  touch  a  little  on  the  difficulties  con- 
nected with  the  story  of  the  flood.  These  difficulties  are 
almost  all  founded  upon  the  idea  that  the  deluge  was  univer- 
sal; that  it  covered  the  highest  tops  of  the  Himalayas  in 
India,  the  Rocky  Mountains  here,  and  all  the  mountains  over 
all  the  earth.  It  is  but  reasonable,  then,  to  ask  if  there  is 
good  reason  for  insisting  that  it  was  universal? 

I  know  of  only  three  strong  reasons  that  are  given  for  this 
position.  The  first  is  the  use  of  the  term  "  earth  "  continu- 
ally throughout  the  narrative,  which  only  proves  that  those 
who  translated  the  Bible  into  English,  believed  the  flood  to 
have  been  universal.  As  we  have  had  occasion  already  to 
prove,  the  word  "  earth  "  in  Hebrew  means  just  as  readily  a 
limited  district.  Why  do  not  those  who  insist  so  strongly 
on  the  wide  signification  of  "earth"  here,  not  insist  upon 
the  same  interpretation  in  such  a  passage  as  Genesis,  xii.  1, 
and  make  it  an  article  of  faith  that  Abraham  left  the  world 
altogether  and  went  to  another,  when  he  left  Ur  of  the 
Chaldees  and  went  to  Canaan?     The  second  argument  for 


DR.  GIBSON'S  REPLY.  77 

universality  is  found  in  universal  expressions,  tlie  strongest 
of  which  is  Gen.  vii.  19:  "And  the  waters  prevailed  ex- 
ceedingly upon  the  earth,  and  all  the  high  hills  that  were 
under  the  whole  heaven  were  covered."  Now  remember 
that  this  is  the  account  of  an  eye-witness,  vividly  describing 
just  what  he  saw,  water  on  every  side,  water  all  around, 
nothing  but  water — even  the  mountains  to  the  farthest  verge 
of  the  horizon  covered  over  with  water.  When,  in  the  book 
of  Job,  we  read  of  the  lightning  flashing  over  the  whole 
heaven,  the  meaning  surely  can  not  be  that  a  lightning  flash 
starts  at  a  certain  degree  of  latitude  and  longitude,  and 
makes  a  journey  right  round  the  world  to  the  point  where 
it  started.  "  The  whole  heavens  "  is  evidently  bounded  by 
the  horizon.  The  third  reason  which  has  led  people  to  sup- 
pose the  whole  earth  was  covered  with  water,  is  found  in 
the  tradition  that  the  ark  rested  on  Mount  Ararat.  The 
tradition,  we  say,  for  that  is  all  the  authority  there  is  for  the 
idea.  In  Gen.  vii.  4,  we  are  told  that  the  ark  rested  on  the 
mountains  or  highlands  of  "  Ararat."  The  word  "  Ararat " 
only  occurs  other  two  times  in  the  Bible,  and  in  neither 
place  does  it  refer  to  what  was  only  long  afterward  called 
Mt.  Ararat.  In  Old  Testament  times  Ararat  was  not  a 
mountain  at  all,  but  a  district,  on  some  of  the  highlands  of 
which  the  ark  rested.  A  moment's  thought  will  show  that 
it  could  not  be  on  the  top  of  Ararat.  It  would  require  one 
of  the  hardiest  mountaineers  to  perform  such  a  feat  as  the 
climbing  of  Ararat.  It  would  be  the  most  inconvenient 
place  you  could  think  of  for  the  ark  to  rest  on.  "When  you 
look  fairly  at  these  three  arguments  that  are  urged  in  sup- 
port of  a  universal  deluge,  you  will  find  that  none  of  them 
really  demand  it. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  are  things  that  seem  to  point 
the  other  way.  In  the  eleventh  verse  of  the  seventh  chap- 
ter we  are  told  that  "  in  the  second  month,  the  seventeenth 


78  MISTAKES  OF  1NGERS0LL. 

day  of  the  month,  were  all  the  fountains  of  the  great  deep 
broken  up,  and  the  windows  of  heaven  were  opened." 
There  is  no  indication  there  of  the  sudden  creation  of  such 
a  body  of  water  as  would  cover  the  earth  to  the  depth  of 
30,000  feet  above  the  old  sea-level.  The  causes  that  are  as- 
signed are  just  such  as  could  be  most  readily  and  naturally 
used.  It  may  be  worth  while  to  notice  here  in  passing,  an 
attempt  which  has  been  made  recently  to  cast  ridicule  upon 
the  story  of  the  flood,  by  representing  the  Bible  as  if  it 
attributed  the  deluge  to  nothing  else  than  a  long,  heavy 
rain,  whereas  the  first  importance  is  given  to  an  entirely 
different  cause:  "the  fountains  of  the  great  deep  were  bro- 
ken up."  That  is  just  what  would  appear  to  one  who  was 
describing  such  a  scene  as  we  imagine  this  to  be.  Suppose 
there  had  been  some  great  submergence  of  the  land  there, 
as  has  taken  place  in  other  parts  of  the  world.  There  would 
be  a  rushing  up  of  water  from  below,  from  "the  fountains 
of  the  great  deep." 

Again,  in  the  first  verse  of  the  eighth  chapter,  natural 
agency  is  made  use  of:  "  God  made  a  wind  to  pass  over  the 
earth,  and  the  waters  assuaged."  There  is  no  reason  why 
we  should  suppose  a  greater  miracle  performed  than  was 
necessary.  Still  further;  turn  to  the  tenth  verse  of  the  ninth 
chapter,  where  God  says:  "I  establish  my  covenant  with 
you,  and  with  every  living  creature  that  is  with  you;  from 
all  that  go  out  of  the  ark,  to  every  beast  of  the  earth." 
What  were  those  beasts  of  the  earth  thus  distinguished  from 
those  going  out  of  the  ark?  Probably  they  were  those  that 
came  from  the  area  of  land  not  covered  by  the  flood. 

Then  again,  attention  is  called  to  the  purpose  of  the  flood, 
which  was  simply  to  destroy  the  race  of  men,  and  it  is  not 
to  be  supposed  they  had  traveled  a  great  distance  by  this 
time  from  their  original  place  of  abode.  The  extent  of  the 
flood  need  not  have  been  any  greater  than  was  necessary  to 
submerge  that  area. 


DR.  GIBSON'S  REPLY.  79 

Further,  when  we  take  this  view,  not  only  do  geological 
and  other  difficulties  disappear,  but  there  is  decided  confir- 
mation from  modern  scientific  research.  There  is  no  evi- 
dence in  geology  that  there  was  in  an}7  period  of  the  earth's 
history,  a  flood  great  enough  to  overtop  the  Rocky  Moun- 
tains, but  there  are  evidences  of  floods  as  great  as  this  one 
must  have  been,  for  the  purpose  of  destroying  the  race.  I 
do  not  know  how  it  is  in  the  immediate  region  where  the 
flood  is  supposed  to  have  been.  I  do  not  know  whether 
geologists  have  explored  it  sufficiently;  but  this  is  certain, 
that  there  are  evidences  of  similar  floods  in  other  parts  of 
the  world.  Some  of  our  own  geologists  have  discovered 
evidences  of  them  in  this  very  neighborhood.  You  have  not 
to  go  very  far  from  Chicago  to  find  such  traces  of  sudden, 
powerful,  and  transient  diluvial  action.  Then,  finally,  this 
view  of  the  deluge  removes,  of  course,  all  difficulty  about 
the  number  of  animals  in  the  ark,  because  all  that  was 
necessary  was,  that  the  species  more  nearly  connected  with 
man,  those  found  in  the  region  that  was  submerged,  should 
be  represented  in  the  ark. 

But  after  all,  the  question  of  extent  is  of  quite  minor 
importance  so  long  as  it  is  conceded  that  it  was  universal  in 
the  sense  of  destroying  all  but  the  family  of  Noah.  The 
reality  of  the  judgment  is  the  great  thing,  and  of  this  we  have 
abundant  confirmation  from  tradition.  We  find  legends  of 
a  flood  everywhere.  We  find  them  among  the  Semitic  and 
Aryan  and  Turanian  races.  We  find  them  east  and  west, 
and  north  and  south;  in  savage  nations  and  civilized  nations; 
on  continents  and  in  islands;  in  the  old  world  and  in  the 
new.  And  if  Egypt  is  a  solitary  exception,  which  is  very 
doubtful,  but  if  it  is,  the  exception  is  accounted  for  by  the 
simple  fact  that  in  that  country  they  have  floods  every  year. 

Here  again,  as  in  the  traditions  of  the  Fall,  there  is 
difference  enough  to  show  which  is  the  original  and  true. 


80  MISTAKES  OF  IXGEBSOLL. 

Other  traditions  of  the  flood  are  polytheistic,  whereas  here 
we  have  the  one  living  and  true  God.  Those  are  full  of 
mythological  elements,  whereas  here  is  a  plain  narrative, 
with  the  impressive  scene  vividly,  but  quite  simply,  depicted. 
In  heathen  traditions,  too,  you  find  -many  grotesque  items 
and  exaggerations,  as  for  instance,  when  the  ark  is  described 
as  three-fourths  of  a  mile  long,  and  drops  of  rain  the  size 
of  a  bull's  head;  and,  generally  speaking,  a  conspicuous  ab- 
sence of  that  moral  purpose  which  is  so  impressive  and  all- 
pervading  in  the  narrative  before  us. 

Faith  in   Jesus  Christ  the   Essential  Factor. 

.     .     .     There  are  those  in  our  day  who  find  a  stumbling- 
block  at  the  very  threshold  of  the  Christian  life,  in  the  fancy, 
that  what  is  required  of  them  in  order  to  salvation,  is  the  cred- 
iting of  all  the  details  of  a  long  history  extending  from  the 
first  man  to  the  last  man,  from  Adam  to  the  consummation 
of  all  things;  and  long  accustomed  to  that  sceptical  attitude 
of  mind  which  questions  all  things,  they  think   it  would 
take  them  a  life-time  (as  indeed  it  would)  to  verify  every 
statement  that  is  made  from   Genesis   to  Revelation,  and 
clear  them  from  all  possible  objections;  and  so  they  do  not 
venture  at  all.     But  remember,  it  is  never  said:  "  Believe 
everything  that  is  in  the  Bible  and  you  will  be  saved."     Ah, 
there  have  been  many  who  believed  everything  in  the  Bible, 
who  never  thought  of  questioning  a  sentence  in  it,  who  will 
find  themselves  none  the  better  for  their  easy  acquiescence 
in  the  statements  of  a  book  which  they  had  been  taught  to 
accept  as  inspired.     There-  is   no    such   word   written   as, 
"  Believe  the  Bible  and  you  will  be  saved."     No.     It  is 
"  Believe  on    the   Lord   Jesus   Christ   and   thou  -  shalt   be 
saved."     Do  not  trouble  yourselves  in  the  first  instance  about 
questions  connected  with  the  book  of  Genesis,  or  difficulties 
suggested  by  the  book  of  Revelation.     Let  the  wars  of  the 


DR.  GIBSON'S  REPLY.  81 

Jews  alone  in  the  meantime,  and  dismiss  Jonah  from  your 
mind.  Look  to  Jesus;  get  acquainted  with  Him;  listen  to 
His  word;  believe  in  Him;  trust  Him;  obey  Him.  That 
is  all  that  is  asked  of  you  in  the  first  instance.  After  you 
have  believed  on  Christ  and  taken  Him  as  your  Saviour 
your  Master,  your  Model,  you  will  not  be  slow  to  find  out 
that  "  all  Scripture  is  given  by  inspiration  of  God,  and  is 
profitable  for  doctrine  and  for  reproof,  and  for  correction, 
and  for  instruction  in  righteousness."  You  may  never 
have  all  your  difficulties  solved,  or  all  your  objections  met; 
but  though  difficulties  may  still  remain,  and  interrogation 
points  be  scattered  here  and  there  over  the  wide  Bible-field, 
you  will  be  sure  of  your  foundation;  you  will  feel  that  your 
feet  are  planted  on  the  "  Kock  of  Ages,"  even  on  Him  of 
whom  God,  by  the  mouth  of  the  prophet  Isaiah,  said: 
"  Behold,  I  lay  in  Zion  for  a  foundation,  a  stone,  a  tried 
stone,  a  precious  corner-stone,  a  sure  foundation:  he  that 
believeth  shall  not  make  haste." 


Candor  v.    Injustice — Dr,    Gibson's   Pointed   Summary. 

The  prevailing  feeling  among  intelligent  readers  of  the 
Bible  in  reference  to  the  profane  and  coarse  assaults  made 
on  it  by  Mr.  Kobert  Ingersoll,  is  that  few  people  are  so 
ignorant  as  to  be  imposed  upon  by  his  vulgar  witticisms. 
But,  inasmuch  as  there  are  not  a  few  who  accept  without 
inquiry  his  account  of  what  is  in  the  Bible,  it  may  be  well 
to  give  a  few  illustrations  of  his  unscrupulousness  in  put- 
ting "mistakes"  into  the  Bible  which  he  either  knows  or 
ought  to  know,  are  not  there. 

He  asserts  positively  that  Moses  must  have  understood 
by  firmament  something  solid,  though  every  one  who  has 
studied  the  subject  knows,  and  the  fact  has  been  published 
again  and  again,  that  the  Hebrew  word  means  something 


82  MISTAKES  OF  INGEESOLL. 

exceedingly  attenuated,  being  the  very  best  word  in  the 
language  to  designate  the  atmosphere;  while  the  mistake 
found  in  the  English  word  "  firmament,"  is  due  to  the  sci- 
ence of  Alexandria,  where  in  the  third  century  before 
Christ,  the  "  expanse  "  of  Moses  was  translated  "  stereoma" 
(firmament)  to  suit  the  advanced  astronomy  of  the  time. 

When,  in  speaking  of  the  vegetation  of  the  third  day,  he 
says,  "  Not  a  blade  of  grass  had  even  been  touched  by  a 
single  gleam  of  light,"  is  he  dealing  fairly  with  a  narrative 
that  makes  light  its  first  creation? 

When  he  accuses  Moses  of  compressing  the  astronomy 
of  the  universe  into  five  words,  is  he  dealing  fairly  with  a 
narrative  that  does  not  profess  to  give  any  astronomy  at 
all,  but,  after  a  general  reference  to  the  heavens  and  the  earth 
as  created  in  the  beginning,  restricts  itself  to  the  earth  and 
its  "  environment?"  Any  intelligent  person  can  see  that 
this  is  the  reason  why  sun,  moon  and  stars  are  referred  to 
only  in  their  relations  to  the  earth. 

When  he  represents  the  first  and  second  chapters  of  Gen- 
esis as  a  varying  repetition  of  the  same  story,  is  it  fair  to 
withhold  all  reference  to  the  different  purport  and  object  of 
the  two  narratives,  which  fully  and  satisfactorily  explains 
the  variation? 

Is  it  fair  to  speak  of  the  deluge  to  represent  it  as  ascribed 
to  nothing  but  rain,  when  the  Bible  expressly  says,  "All 
the  fountains  of  the  great  deep  were  broken  up,"  evidently 
pointing  to  such  a  subsidence  of  the  land  as  is  familiar  to 
any  one  acquainted  with  geology. 

Is  it  fair  to  make  the  Bible  responsible  for  the  Armenian 
tradition  that  the  ark  rested  on  the  top  of  Mount  Ararat, 
17,000  feet  high,  when  the  Bible  nowhere,  from  Genesis  to 
Revelation,  makes  any  such  statement?  The  district  of 
Ararat  on  the  mountains  or  highlands  of  which  the  ark 
rested  is  not  the  "  Agri-Dagh"  to  which  the  name  Ararat 


DR.  GIBSON'S  REPLY.  83 

has  in  modern  times  been  given;  and  Mr.  Ingersoll's 
io-norant  mistake  about  it  is  ol  the  same  kind  as  that  of  the 
bumpkin  who  should  inquire  for  the  Coliseum  in  Rome,  N. 
Y.,  or  seek  the  tomb  of  Leonidas  in  Sparta,  Wisconsin. 

It  will  be  at  once  seen  that  with  this  childlike  ignorance 
is  connected  the  Ingersoll  nonsense  that  the  water  was  live 
and  a  half  miles  deep.  So  says  the  ignorant  critic,  while 
\he  simple  and  reasonable  statement  of  the  Bible  is: 
uFifteen  cubits  upwards  did  the  water  prevail."  As  for  the 
submersion  of  even  the  hills  to  the  utmost  verge  of  the 
horizon,  the  subsidence  of  the  land  was  quite  sufficient  to 
accomplish  it  without  resorting  to  the  supposition  of  any 
unreasonable  quantity  of  water. 

Is  it  fair,  when  Mr.  Ingersoll  wishes  to  render  ridiculous 
the  rate  of  increase  among  the  Israelites  in  Egypt,  to  rep- 
resent the  length  of  their  stay  there  as  215  years,  when 
Moses  says  (Exodus,  xn.,  40):  "  Now  the  sojourning  of  the 
children  of  Israel  who  dwelt  in  Egypt  was  430  years." 
The  only  other  place  in  the  Pentateuch  where  the  length  of 
their  stay  is  referred  to  is  in  the  prediction  concerning  it  in 
Genesis  xv.,  where  it  is  put  in  round  numbers  at  400 
years.  To  do  Mr.  Ingersoll  justice,  it  is  admitted  that 
certain  theologians,  on  the  strength  of  one  or  two  passages 
in  the  New  Testament  and  some  genealogical  difficulties, 
have  favored  shortening  the  period,  but  the  subject  was  not 
the  mistakes  of  Moses,  but  of  theologians;  and  again  we 
ask,  Was  it  fair,  without  a  word  of  apology  or  explanation, 
to  deduct  more  than  two  centuries  from  the  time  Moses 
gives,  and  then  make  all  his  coarse,  not  to  say  indecent, 
ridicule  turn  on  the  shortness  of  the  time? 

One  hardly  knows  how  to  characterize  the  infamy  of  such 
a  passage  as  that  about  the  bird-eating  priests  during  the 
time  of  rapid  increase,  in  view  of  the  fact  that  there  were 
no  priests  at  all,  and  no  such  rule  as  he  refers  to  during  the 


84  MISTAKES  OF  INGERSOLL. 

entire  430  years!  The  consecration  of  Aaron,  the  first 
priest,  did  not  take  place  till  after  the  Law  was  given  at 
Sinai,  and  the  ordinance  relating  to  the  offering  of  the 
pigeons  was  still  later.  These  are  mere  specimens  of  the 
mistakes  and  misrepresentations  which  form  the  warp  and 
woof  of  this  lecture. 


WHAT  DISTINGUISHED  MEN  SAY  OF  THE  BIBLE.     85 


WHAT  DISTINGUISHED   ME1ST  SAY  OF 
THE  BIBLE. 


SCIENTISTS. 

The  grand  old  book  of  God  still  stands,  and  this  old  earth, 
the  more  its  leaves  are  turned  over  and  pondered,  the  more 
it  will  sustain  and  illustrate  the  sacred  word. — Professor 
Dana. 

Infidelity  has,  from  time,  erected  her  imposing  ramparts, 
and  opened  fire  upon  Christianity  from  a  thousand  batter- 
ies. But  the  moment  the  rays  of  truth  were  concentrated 
upon  their  ramparts  they  melted  away.  The  last  clouds  of 
ignorance  are  passing,  and  the  thunders  of  infidelity  are 
dying  upon  the  ear.  The  union  and  harmony  of  Christian- 
ity and  science  is  a  sure  token  that  the  flood  of  unbelief  and 
ignorance  shall  never  more  go  over  the  world. — Professor 
Hitchcock. 

All  human  discoveries  seem  to  be  made  only  for  the  pur- 
pose of  confirming,  more  and  more  strongly,  the  truths 
contained  in  the  sacred  Scriptures. — Sir  John  Herschel. 

The  Bible  furnishes  the  only  fitting  vehicle  to  express  the 
thoughts  that  overwhelm  us  when  contemplating  the  stellar 
universe. — 0.  M.  Mitchell. 

In  my  investigation  of  natural  science,  I  have  always 
found  that  whenever  I  can  meet  with  anything  in  the  Bible, 


86  MISTAKES  OF  INGEBSOLL. 

on  any  subject,  it  always  affords  me  a  fine  platform  on  which 
to  stand. — Lieutenant  Maury 

If  the  God  of  love  is  most  appropriately  worshiped  in 
the  Christian  temple,  the  God  of  nature  may  be  equally 
honored  in  the  temple  of  science.  Even  from  its  lofty 
minarets,  the  philosopher  may  summon  the  faithful  to 
prayer;  and  the  priest  and  the  sage  exchange  altars  without 
the  compromise  of  faith  or  knowledge. — Sir  David  Brews- 
ter. 

A  nation's  intellectual  progress  has  always  followed — not 
preceded — some  moral  impulse.  The  history  of  the  fine  arts 
shows  that  some  form  of  religion  gave  them  their  earliest 
impulse.  There  has  never  been  a  great  genius  but  has  been 
inspired  in  some  sense  by  religion.  The  thoughts  of  the 
intellect  are  lofty  in  proportion  as  the  sentiments  of  the 
heart  are  profound.  If  we  begin  the  attempt  to  improve 
men  with  the  intellect  we  end  where  we  begun.  Education 
will  not  remove  corruption.  It  may  guide  vice  as  in  ancient 
Rome  and  Athens,  but  will  not  uproot  it.  A  godless  edu- 
cation has  no  power  to  purify.  Instruction  in  morality 
also  has  failed  to  regenerate.  No  man  does  his  duty  simply 
because  he  knows  it  unless  he  loves  it;  nor  are  political  and 
social  changes  effective.  Social  evil  has  its  root  in  the 
individual  heart,  and  cannot  be  removed  except  by  influ- 
ences operating  within  it.  This  fountain  of  man's  corrup- 
tion must  be  purified  to  corrupt  social  vice. — Prof.  Seelye- 


STATESMEN. 

There  is  a  book  worth  all  other  books  which  were  ever 
printed. — Patrick  Henry. 

Tue  Bible  is  the  best  book  in  the  world. — John  Adams. 


WHAT  DISTINGUISHED  MEN  SAY  OF  THE  BIBLE.    87 

So  great  is  my  veneration  for  the  Bible,  that  the  earlier 
my  children  begin  to  read  it,  the  more  confident  will  be  my 
hopes  that  they  will  prove  useful  citizens  to  their  country, 
and  respectable  members  of  society. — John  Quincy  Ad- 
ams. 

It  is  impossible  to  govern  the  world  without  God.  He 
must  be  worse  than  an  infidel  that  lacks  faith,  and  more 
than  wicked  that  has  not  gratitude  enough  to  acknowledge 
his  obligation. — General  George  Washington. 

Pointing  to  the  family  Bible  on  the  stand,  during  his  last 
illness,  Andrew  Jackson  said  to  his  friend:  "That  book,  sir, 
is  the  rock  on  which  our  republic  rests." 

I  deem  the  present  occasion  sufficiently  important  and 
solemn  to  justify  me  in  expressing  to  my  fellow  citizens  a 
profound  reverence  for  the  Christian  religion,  and  a  thorough 
conviction  that  sound  morals,  religious  liberty,  and  a  just 
sense  of  religious  responsibility,  are  essentially  connected 
with  all  true  and  lasting  happiness. — General  Harrison  s 
Inaugural  Address. 

As  to  Jesus  of  Nazareth,  my  opinion  of  whom  you  par- 
ticularly desire,  I  think  the  system  of  morals,  and  His  relig- 
ion, as  He  left  them  to  us,  is  the  best  the  world  ever  saw,  or 
is  likely  to  see. — Benjamin  Franklin. 

Do  you  think  that  your  pen,  or  the  pen  of  any  other  man, 
can  unchristianize  the  mass  of  our  citizens?  Or  have  you 
hopes  of  corrupting  a  few  of  them  to  assist  you  in  so  bad  a 
cause? — Samuel  Adams'  Letter  to  Thomas  Paine. 

Christianity  is  the  only  true  and  perfect  religion,  and  that 
in  proportion  as  mankind  adopt  its  principles  and  obey  its 
precepts,  they  will  be  wise  and  happy.  And  a  better  knowl- 
edge of  this  religion  is  to  be  acquired  by  reading  the  Bible 
than  in  any  other  way. — Benjamin  Rush. 


88  MISTAKES  OF  INGERSOLL. 

"When  that  illustrious  man,  Chief  Justice  Joy,  was  dying, 
he  was  asked  if  he  had  any  farewell  address  to  leave  his- 
children ;  he  replied,  "  They  have  the  Bible..'' 

I  always  have  had,  and  always  shall  have,  a  profound  re- 
gard for  Christianity,  the  religion  of  my  fathers,  and  for  its 
rites,  its  usages,  and  observances. — Henry  Clay. 

A  few  days  before  his  death,  "  the  foremost  man  of  all 
his  times,"  drew  up  and  signed  this  declaration  of  his  relig- 
ious faith:  "  Lord,  I  believe;  help  thou  mine  unbelief. 
Philosophical  argument,  especially  that  drawn  from  the 
vastness  of  the  universe,  in  comparison  with  the  insignifi- 
cance of  this  globe,  has  sometimes  shaken  my  reason  for 
the  faith  that  is  in  me,  but  my  heart  has  always  assured 
and  reassured  me  that  the  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ  must  be  a 
divine  reality.  The  Sermon  on  the  Mount  cannot  be  a 
merely  human  production.  This  belief  enters  into  the  very 
depth  of  my  conscience." — Daniel  Webster. 

"  Hold  fast  to  the  Bible  as  the  sheet  anchor  of  our  liber- 
erties;  write  its  precepts  on  your  hearts,  and  practice  them 
in  your  lives.  To  the  influence  of  this  book  we  are  indebted 
for  the  progress  made  in  true  civilization,  and  to  this  we 
must  look  as  our  guide  in  the  future. —  U.  S.  Grant. 

Philosophy  has  sometimes  forgotten  God ;  as  great  people 
never  did.  The  skepticism  of  the  last  century  could  not 
uproot  Christianity,  because  it  lived  in  the  hearts  of  the 
millions.  Do  you  think  that  infidelity  is  spreading?  Chris- 
tianity never  lived  in  the  hearts  of  so  many  millions  as  at 
this  moment.  The  forms  under  which  it  is  professed  may 
decay,  for  they,  like  all  that  is  the  work  of  man's  hands,  are 
subject  to  the  changes  and  chances  of  mortal  being;  but  the 
spirit  of  truth  is  incorruptible;  it  may  be  developed,  illus- 
trated and  applied;  it  can  never  die;  it  never  can  decline. 


WHAT  DISTINGUISHED  MEN  SAY  OF  THE  BIBLE.    89 

No  truth  can  perish.  No  truth  can  pass  away.  The  flame 
is  undying,  though  generations  disappear.  Wherever  mor- 
tal truth  has  started  into  being  humanity  claims  and  guards 
the  bequest.  Each  generation  gathers  together  the  imper- 
ishable children  of  the  past,  and  increases  them  by  the  new 
sons  of  the  light,  alike  radiant  with  immortality. — Ban- 
croft. 


GEEAT      THINKERS. 


It  is  a  belief  in  the  Bible  which  has  served  me  as  the 
guide  of  my  moral  and  literary  life. — Goethe. 

I  account  the  Scriptures  of  God  to  be  the  most  sublime 
philosophy. — Sir  Isaac  Newton. 

To  give  a  man  a  full  knowledge  of  true  morality,  I 
should  need  to  send  him  to  no  other  book  than  the  New 
Testament. — John  Locke. 

I  know  the  Bible  is  inspired,  because  it  finds  me  at 
greater  depths  of  my  being  than  any  other  book. — Cole- 
ridge. 

A  noble  book!  All  men's  book.  It  is  our  first  state- 
ment of  the  never-ending  problem  of  man's  destiny  and 
God's  way  with  men  on  earth. — Carlyle. 

I  must  confess  the  majesty  of  the  Scriptures  strikes  me 
with  astonishment. — Rousseau. 

"  There  is  not  a  boy  nor  a  girl,  all  Christendom  through, 
but  their  lot  is  made  better  by  this  great  book.— Theodore 
Parker. 

Take  the  gospel  away,  and  what  a  mockery  is  human 
philosophy!     I  once  met  a  thoughtful  scholar  who  told  me 


VO  MISTAKES  OF  INGERSOLL. 

that  for  years  he  had  read  every  book  which  assailed  the 
religion  of  Jesus  Christ.  He  said  that  he  should  have 
become  an  infidel  if  it  had  not  been  for  three  things: 

"  First,  I  am  a  man.  I  am  going  somewhere.  I  am  to- 
night a  day  nearer  the  grave  than  last  night.  I  have  read 
all  that  they  can  tell  me.  There  is  not  one  solitary  ray  of 
light  upon  the  darkness.  They  shall  not  take  away  the 
only  guide  and  leave  me  stone  blind. 

"  Secondly,  I  had  a  mother.  I  saw  her  go  down  into  the 
dark  valley  where  I  am  going,  and  she  leaned  upon  an  un- 
seen arm  as  calmly  as  a  child  goes  to  sleep  upon  the  breast 
of  a  mother.     I  know  that  was  not  a  dream. 

"  Thirdly,"  he  said  with  tears  in  his  eyes,  "  I  have  three 
motherless  daughters.  They  have  no  protector  but  myself. 
I  would  rather  kill  them  than  leave  them  in  this  sinful 
world  if  you  could  blot  out  from  it  all  the  teachings  of  the 
Gospel. " — Bishop  Whipple. 

When  Daniel  Webster  was  in  his  best  moral  state,  and 
when  he  was  in  the  prime  of  his  manhood,  he  was  one  day 
dining  with  a  company  of  literary  gentlemen  in  the  city  of 
Boston.  The  company  was  composed  of  clergymen,  law- 
yers, physicians,  statesmen,  merchants,  and  almost  all 
classes  of  literary  persons.  During  the  dinner  conversa- 
tion incidentally  turned  upon  the  subject  of  Christianity. 
Mr.  Webster,  as  the  occasion  was  in  honor  of  him,  was 
expected  to  take  a  leading  part  in  the  conversation,  and  he 
frankly  stated  as  his  religious  sentiments  his  belief  in  the 
divinity  of  Christ,  and  his  dependence  upon  the  atonement 
of  the  Savior.  A  minister  of  very  considerable  literary 
reputation  sat  almost  opposite  him  at  the  table,  and  he 
looked  at  him  and  said:  "Mr.  Webster,  can  you  compre- 
hend how  Jesus  Christ  could  be  both  God  and  man?  "  Mr. 
Webster,  with  one  of  those  looks  which  no  man  can  imitate, 


WHAT  DISTINGUISHED  MEN  SAY  OF  THE  BIBLE.    91 

fixed  his  eyes  upon  him,  and  promptly  and  emphatically 
said:  "No,  sir,  I  cannot  comprehend  it;  and  I  would  be 
ashamed  to  acknowledge  him  as  my  Savior  if  1  could  com- 
prehend it.  If  I  could  comprehend  him,  he  could  be  no 
greater  than  myself,  and  such  is  my  conviction  of  accounta- 
bility to  God,  such  is  my  sense  of  sinfulness  before  him, 
and  such  is  my  knowledge  of  my  own  incapacity  to  recover 
myself,  that  I  feel  1  need  a  superhuman  Savior." — Bishop 
Janes. 

What  can  be  more  foolish  than  to  think  that  all  this  rare 
fabric  of  Heaven  and  earth  could  come  by  chance,  when  all 
the  skill  of  art  is  not  able  to  make  an  oyster? — Jeremy 
Taylor. 

It  would  not  be  worth  while  to  live  if  we  were  to  die 
entirely.  That  which  alleviates  labor  and  sanctifies  toil  is 
to  have  before  us  the  vision  of  a  better  world  through  the 
darkness  of  this  life.  That  world  is  to  me  more  real  than 
the  chimera  which  we  devour,  and  which  we  call  life.  It  is 
forever  before  my  eyes.  It  is  the  supreme  certainty  of  my 
reason,  as  it  is  the  supreme  consolation  of  my  soul. —  Vic- 
tor Hugo. 

Once,  had  I  been  called  upon  to  create  the  earth,  I  should 
have  done  as  the  many  would  now.  I  should  have  laid  it  out 
in  pleasure-grounds,  and  given  man  Milton's  occupation  of 
tending  flowers.  But  I  am  now  satisfied  with  this  wild 
earth,  its  awful  mountains  and  depths,  steeps  and  torrents. 
I  am  not  sorry  to  learn  that  God's  end  is  a  virtue  far 
higher  than  I  should  have  prescribed.— Charming. 

To  do  good  to  men  is  the  great  work  of  life;  to  make 
them  true  Christians  is  the  greatest  good  we  can  do  them. 
Every  investigation  brings  us  round  to  this  point.     Begin 


92  MISTAKES  OF  INGERSOLL. 

here  and  you  are  like  one  who  strikes  water  from  a  rock  on 
the  summit  of  the  mountains;  it  flows  down  all  the  inter- 
vening tracts  to  the  very  base.  If  we  could  make  each 
man  love  his  neighbor,  we  should  make  a  happy  world. 
The  true  method  is  to  begin  with  ourselves  and  so  extend 
the  circle  around  us.  It  should  be  perpetually  in  our 
minds. — J.  W.  Alexander. 

From  philosophy,  from  poetry  and  from  art,  is  heard  the 
acknowledgment  that  there  is  no  repose  for  the  rational 
spirit  but  in  moral  truth.  The  testimony  that  the  whole 
creation  groaneth  and  travaileth  in  pain,  together,  is  as 
loud  and  convincing  from  the  domain  of  letters,  as  it  is 
from  the  cursed  and  thistle-bearing  ground.  From  the 
immortal  longing  and  dissatisfaction  of  Plato,  down  to  the 
wild  and  passionate  restlessness  of  Byron  and  Shelley,  the 
evidence  is  decisive  that  a  spiritual  and  religious  element 
must  enter  into  the  education  of  man  in  order  to  inward 
harmony  and  rest. — Dr.  Shedd. 

"  The  mother  of  a  family  was  married  to  an  infidel,  who 
made  a  jest  of  religion  in  the  presence  of  his  own  children; 
yet  she  succeeded  in  bringing  them  all  up  in  the  fear  of 
the  Lord.  I  one  day  asked  her  how  she  preserved  them 
from  the  influence  of  a  father  whose  sentiments  were  so 
openly  opposed  to  her  own.  This  was  her  answer:  'Because 
to  the  authority  of  a  father  I  did  not  oppose  the  authority 
of  a  mother,  but  that  of  God.  From  their  earliest  years  my 
children  have  always  seen  the  Bible  upon  my  table.  This 
holy  book  has  constituted  the  whole  of  their  religious 
instruction.  I  was  silent  that  I  might  allow  it  to  speak. 
Did  they  propose  a  question,  did  they  commit  any  fault, 
did  they  perform  any  good  action,  I  opened  the  Bible,  and 
the  Bible  answered,  reproved   or  encouraged   them.     The 


IV HAT  DISTINGUISHED  MEN  SAY  OF  THE  BIBLE.    93 

constant  reading  of  the  Scriptures  has  alone    wrought  the 
prodigy  which  surprises  you.'  " — Adolphe  Monod. 

I  preached  on  Sunday  in  the  parlors  at  Long  Branch. 
The  war  was  over,  and  Admiral  Farm  gut  and  his  family 
were  spending  the  summer  at  the  Branch.  Sitting  on  the 
portico  of  the  hotel  Monday  morning,  he  said  to  me, 
si  Would  you  like  to  know  how  I  was  enahled  to  serve  my 
country?  It  wTas  all  owing  to  a  resolution  I  formed  when 
I  was  ten  years  of  age.  My  father  was  sent  down  to  New 
Orleans  with  the  little  navy  we  then  had,  to  look  after  the 
treason  of  Burr.  I  accompanied  him  as  cabin-boy.  I  had 
some  qualities  that  I  thought  made  a  man  of  me.  I  could 
swear  like  an  old  salt;  could  drink  a  stiff  glass  of  grog  as 
if  I  had  doubled  Cape  Horn,  and  could  smoke  like  a  loco- 
motive. I  was  great  at  cards  and  fond  of  gaming  in  every 
shape.  At  the  close  of  the  dinner  one  day,  my  father 
turned  every  body  out  of  the  cabin,  locked  the  door,  and 
said  to  me: 

"  '  David,  what  do  you  mean  to  be? ' 

"  <  I  mean  to  follow  the  sea.' 

"  '  Follow  the  sea!  Yes,  be  a  poor,  miserable  drunken 
sailor  be! ore  the  mast,  kicked  and  cuffed  about  the  world, 
and  die  in  some  fever  hospital,  in  a  foreign  clime.' 

" '  No,'  I  said,  '  I'll  tread  the  quarter-deck  and  command 
as  you  do.' 

"'No,  David;  no  boy  ever  trod  the  quarter-deck  with 
such  principles  as  you  have,  and  such  habits  as  you  exhibit. 
You'll  have  to  change  your  whole  course  of  life  if  you  ever 
become  a  man.' 

"  My  father  left  me  and  went  on  deck.  I  was  stunned 
by  the  rebuke  and  overwhelmed  with  mortification.  '  A 
poor,  miserable,  drunken  sailor  before  the  mast,  kicked  and 
cuffed  about  the  world,  and  to  die  in  some  fever  hospital ! 


94  MISTAKES  OF  INGEESOLL. 

That's  raj  fate,  is  it?  I'll  change  my  life,  and  change  it  at 
once.  I  will  never  utter  another  oath,  I  will  never  drink 
another  drop  of  intoxicating  liquors,  I  will  never  gamble.' 
And,  as  God  is  rny  witness,  I  have  kept  those  three  vows 
to  this  hour.  Shortly  after,  I  became  a  Christian.  That 
act  settled  my  temporal,  as  it  settled  my  eternal  destiny. " 
— Anon. 

A  Bible  well  worn  in  that  part  which  contains  the  Ser- 
mon on  the  Mount  is  the  book  which  our  age  most  needs. 
There  the  Will  of  the  Father,  those  laws  which  save  souls 
or  damn  them  lie  in  perfect  plainness.  JSTo  commentary 
can  throw  light  upon  them,  no  science  or  learning  can  take 
their  light  away.  They  are  a  part  of  the  universe,  only 
more  imperishable  than  the  stars.  Christ  died  for  man  be- 
cause man  would  not  respect  these  laws  of  the  kingdom. 
Having  died  for  sinners,  He  now  invites  them  to  come  into 
these  laws  of  the  Father.  Do  not  mistake  the  invitation. — 
David  Swing. 

You  never  can  get  at  the  literal  limitation  of  living  facts. 
They  disguise  themselves  by  the  very  strength  of  their  life; 
get  told  again  and  again  in  different  ways  by  all  manner  of 
people;  the  literalness  of  them  is  turned  topsy-turvy,  inside 
out,  over  and  over  again;  then  the  fools  come  and  read  them 
wrong  side  upwards,  or  else  say  there  never  was  a  fact  at  all. 
Kothing  delights  a  true  blockhead  so  much  as  to  prove  a  neg- 
ative,— to  show  that  everybody  has  been  wrong.  Fancy  the 
delicious  sensation  to  an  empty-headed  creature  of  fancying 
for  a  moment  that  he  has  emptied  everybody  else's  head  as 
well  as  his  own !  nay,  that  for  once,  his  own  hollow  bottle 
of  a  head  has  had  the  best  of  other  bottles,  and  has  been^r^ 
empty, — first  to  know  nothing. — Huskin. 

It  is  not  so  wretched  to  be  blind  as  it  is  not  to  be  capable 
of  enduring  blindness.     Let  me  be  the  most  feeble  creature 


WHAT  DISTINGUISHED  MEN  SAY  OF  THE  BIBLE.     95 

alive  as  long  as  that  feebleness  serves  to  invigorate  the  en- 
ergies of  my  rational  and  immortal  spirit;  so  long  as  in  that 
obscurity  in  which  1  am  enveloped  the  light  of  the  divine 
presence  more  clearly  shines;  and  indeed,  in  my  blindness 
I  enjoy  in  no  inconsiderable  degree  the  favor  of  the  Deity, 
who  regards  me  with  more  tenderness  and  compassion  in 
proportion  as  I  am  able  to  behold  nothing  but  Himself. 
For  the  divine  law  not  only  shields  me  from  injury,  but  al- 
most renders  me  too  sacred  to  attack,  as  from  the  overshad- 
owing of  those  heavenly  wings  which  seem  to  have  occasioned 
this  obscurity. — Milton. 

A  pkince  said  to  Eabbi  Gamaliel:  "Your  God  is  a 
thief;  he  surprised  Adam  in  his  sleep,  and  stole  a  rib  from 
him."  The  Rabbi's  daughter  overheard  this  speech,  and 
whispered  a  word  or  two  in  her  father's  ear,  asking  his 
permission  to  answer  this  singular  opinion  herself.  He 
gave  his  consent.  The  girl  stepped  forward,  and  feigning 
terror  and  dismay,  threw  her  arms  aloft  in  supplication,  and 
cried  out,  "  My  liege,  my  liege,  justice!  revenge!  "  "  What 
has  happened?"  asked  the  prince.  "A  wicked  theft  lias 
taken  place,"  she  replied.  "  A  robber  has  crept  secretly 
into  our  house,  carried  away  a  silver  goblet,  and  left  a 
golden  one  in  its  stead."  "  What  an  upright  thief ! " 
exclaimed  the  prince.  "  Would  that  such  robberies  were 
of  more  frequent  occurrence!"  "Behold,  then,  sir,  the 
kind  of  thief  our  Creator  was;  he  stole  a  rib  from  Adam, 
and  gave  him  a  beautiful  wife  instead."  "Well  said!" 
avowed  the  prince. —  Talmud  Sanhedrim. 

Once  there  was  a  Judge  who  had  a  colored  man.  The 
colored  man  was  very  godly,  and  the  Judge  used  to  have 
him  to  drive  him  around  in  his  circuit.  The  Judge  used 
often  to  talk  with  him,  and  the  colored  man  would  tell  the 
Judge  about  his  religious  experience,  and  about  his  battles; 


96  MISTAKES  OF  INGERSOLL. 

and  conflicts.  One  da}-  the  Judge  said  to  him :  "  Sambo, 
how  is  it  that  you  Christians  are  always  talking  about  the 
conflicts  you  have  with  Satan?  I  am  better  off  than  you 
are.  I  don't  have  any  troubles  or  conflicts,  and  yet  I  am  an 
infidel  and  you  are  a  Christian — always  in  a  muss; — how's 
that,  Sambo?"  This  floored  the  colored  man  for  awhile.  He 
did  n't  know  how  to  meet  the  old  infidel's  argument.  So  he 
shook  his  head  sorrowfully  and  said:  "I  dunno,  Massa,  I 
dunno."  The  Judge  always  carried  a  gun  along  with  him 
for  hunting.  Pretty  soon  they  came  to  a  lot  of  ducks.  The 
Judge  took  his  gun  and  blazed  away  at  them,  and  wounded 
one  and  killed  another.  The  Judge  said  quickly:  "You 
jump  in,  Sambo,  and  get  that  wounded  duck  before  he  gets 
off,"  and  did  not  pay  any  attention  to  the  dead  one.  In 
went  Sambo  for  the  wounded  duck,  and  came  out  reflecting. 
The  colored  man  then  thought  he  had  an  illustration.  He 
said  to  the  Judge :  "  I  hab  'im  now,  Mas-a;  I'se  able  to 
show  you  how  de  Christian  hab  greater  conflict  dan  de  infi- 
del. Do  n't  you  know  de  moment  you  wounded  dat  ar  duck, 
how  anxious  you  was  to  get  'im  out,  and  you  did  n't  care  for 
de  dead,  but  jus'  lef '  him  alone?  "  "  Yes,"  said  the  Judge. 
"Weil,"  said  Sambo,  "ye  see  as  how  dat  are  dead  duck's  a 
sure  thing.  I  'se  wounded,  and  I  tries  to  get  away  from  the 
debbil.  It  takes  trouble  to  cotch  me.  But,  Massa,  you  are 
a  dead  duck — dar's  no  squabble  for  you;  de  debbil  have  you 
sure!"  So  the  devil  has  no  conflict  with  the  infidel. — D. 
L.  Moody. 


"MISTAKES  OF  MOSES."  97 


INGERSOLL'S  LECTURE 

ON 

The  Mistakes  of  Moses." 


Now  and  then  some  one  asks  me  why  I  am  endeavoring  to  interfere 
with  the  religious  faith  of  others,  and  why  I  try  to  take  from  the  world 
the  consolation  naturally  arising  from  a  belief  in  eternal  fire.  And  I  an- 
swer, I  want  to  do  what  little  I  can  to  make  my  country  truly  free.  I 
want  to  broaden  the  intellectual  horizon  of  our  people.  I  want  it  so  that 
we  can  differ  upon  all  those  questions,  and  yet  grasp  each  other's  hands 
in  genuine  friendship.  I  want  in  the  first  place  to  free  the  clergy.  I  am 
a  great  friend  of  theirs,  but  they  don't  seem  to  have  found  it  out  gener- 
ally. I  want  it  so  that  every  minister  will  be  not  a  parrot,  not  an  owl  sit- 
ting upon  a  dead  limb  of  the  tree  of  knowledge  and  hooting  the  hoots  that 
have  been  hooted  for  eighteen  hundred  years.  But  I  want  it  so  that  each 
one  can  be  an  investigator,  a  thinker;  and  I  want  to  make  his  congregation 
grand  enough  so  that  they  will  not  only  allow  him  to  think,  but  will  de- 
mand that  he  shall  think,  and  give  to  them  the  honest  truth  of  his 
thought.  As  it  is  now,  ministers  are  employed  like  attorneys — for  the 
plaintiff  or  the  defendant.  If  a  few  people  know  of  a  young  man  in  the 
neighborhood  maybe  who  has  not  a  good  constitution — he  may  not  be 
healthy  enough  to  be  wicked — a  young  man  who  has  shown  no  decided 
talent — it  occurs  to  them  to  make  him  a  minister.  They  contribute  and 
send  him  to  some  school.  If  it  turns  out  that  that  young  man  has  more  of 
the  man  in  him  than  they  thought,  and  he  changes  his  opinion,  every 
one  who  contributed  will  feel  himself  individually  swindled — and  they 
will  follow  that  young  man  to  the  grave  with  the  poisoned  shafts  of  mal- 
ice and  slander.  I  want  it  so  that  every  one  will  be  free— so  that  a  pulpit  will 
not  be  a  pillory.  They  have  in  Massachusetts,  at  a  place  called  Andover, 
7 


98  MISTAKES  OF  INGERSOLL. 

a  kind  of  minister- factory;  and  every  professor  in  that  factory  takes  an 
oath  once  in  every  five  years — that  is  as  long  as  an  oath  will  last — that 
not  only  has  he  not  during  the  last  five  years,  but  so  help  him  God,  he 
will  not  during  the  next  five  years  intellectually  advance;  and  probably 
there  is  no  oath  he  could  easier  keep.  Since  the  foundation  of  that  insti- 
tution there  has  not  been  one  case  of  perjury.  They  believe  the  same 
creed  they  first  taught  when  the  foundation  stone  was  laid,  and  now  when 
they  send  out  a  minister  they  brand  him  as  hardware  from  Sheffield  and 
Birmingham.  And  every  man  who  knows  where  he  was  educated  knows 
his  creed,  knows  every  argument  of  his  creed,  every  book  that  he  re  .ids, 
and  just  what  he  amounts  to  intellectually,  and  knows  he  will  shrink  and 
shrivel,  and  become  solemnly  stupid  day  after  clay  until  he  meets  with 
death.  It  is  all  wrong;  it  is  cruel.  Those  men  should  be  allowed  to 
grow.     They  should  have  the  air  of  liberty  and  the  sunshine  of  thought. 

I  want  to  free  the  schools  of  our  country.  I  want  it  so  that  when  a 
professor  in  a  college  finds  some  fact  inconsistent  with  Moses,  he  will  not 
hide  the  fact,  that  it  will  not  be  the  worse  for  him  for  having  discovered 
the  fact.  I  wish  to  see  an  eternal  divorce  and  separation  between  church 
and  schools.  The  common  school  is  the  bread  of  life;  but  there  should 
be  nothing  taught  in  the  schools  except  what  somebody  knows;  and  any- 
thing else  should  not  be  maintained  by  a  system  of  general  taxation.  I 
want  its  professors  so  that  they  will  tell  everything  they  find;  that  they 
will  be  free  to  investigate  in  every  direction,  and  will  not  be  trammeled 
by  the  superstitions  of  our  day.  What  has  religion  to  do  with  facts  ? 
Nothing.  Is  there  any  such  thing  as  Methodist  mathematics,  Presbyter- 
ian botany,  Catholic  astronomy  or  Baptist  biology?  What  has  any  form 
of  superstition  or  religion  to  do  with  a  fact  or  with  any  science  ?  Nothing 
but  to  hinder,  delay  or  embarrass.  I  want,  then,  to  free  the  schools; 
and  I  want  to  free  the  politicians,  so  that  a  man  will  not  have  to  pretend 
he  is  a  Methodist,  or  his  wife  a  Baptist,  or  his  grandmother  a  Catholic; 
so  that  he  can  go  through  a  campaign,  and  when  he  gets  through  will 
find  none  of  the  dust  of  hypocrisy  on  his  knees. 

I  want  the  people  splendid  enough  that  when  they  desire  men  to 
make  laws  for  them,  they  will  take  one  who  knows  something,  who  has 
brains  enough  to  prophesy  the  destiny  of  the  American  Republic,  no 
matter  what  his  opinions  may  be  upon  any  religious  subject.  Suppose 
we  are  in  a  storm  out  at  sea,  and  the  billows  are  washing  over  our  ship, 
and  it  is  necessary  that  some  one  should  reef  the  topsail,  and  a  man  pre- 
sents himself.  Would  you  stop  him  at  the  foot  of  the  mast  to  find  out 
his  opinion  on  the  five  points  of  Calvinism?  What  has  that  to  do  with 
it?  Congress  has  nothing  to  do  with  baptism  or  any  particular  creed, 
and  from  what  little  experience  I  have  had  of  Washington,  very  little  to 


11  MIS  TAKES  OF  MOSES."  99 

do  with  any  kind  of  religion  whatever.  Now  I  hope,  this  afternoon,  this 
magnificent  and  splendid  audience  will  forget  that  they  are  Baptists  or 
Methodists,  and  remember  that  they  are  men  and  women.  These  are  the 
highest  titles  humanity  can  bear — man  and  woman;  and  every  title  you 
add  belittles  them.  Man  is  the  highest;  woman  is  the  highest.  Let  us 
remember  that  we  are  simply  human  beings,  with  interests  in  common. 
And  let  us  remember  that  our  views  depend  largely  upon  the  country  in 
whic'i  we  happen  to  live.  Suppose  we  were  born  in  Turkey  most  of  us 
would  have  been  Mohammedans;  and  when  we  read  in  the  book  that 
when  Mohammed  visited  heaven  he  became  acquainted  with  an  angel 
named  Gabriel,  who  was  so  broad  between  his  eyes  that  it  would  take  a 
smart  camel  three  hundred  days  to  m  ike  the  journey,  we  probably  would 
have  believed  it.  If  we  did  not,  people  would  say:  "  That  young  man 
is  dangerous;  he  is  trying  to  tear  down  the  fabric  of  our  religion.  What 
do  you  propose  to  give  us  instead  of  that  angel?  We  cannot  afford  to 
trade  off  an  angel  of  that  size  for  nothing."  Or  if  we  had  been  born  in 
India,  we  would  have  believed  in  a  god  with  three  heads.  Now  we  be- 
lieve in  three  gods  with  one  head.  And  so  we  might  make  a  tour  of  the 
world  and  see  that  every  superstition  that  could  be  imagined  by  the  brain 
of  man  has  been  in  some  place  held  to  be  sacred. 

Now  some  one  says,  "The  religion  of  my  father  and  mother  is  good 
enough  for  me."  Suppose  we  all  said  that,  where  would  be  the  progress 
of  the  world?  We  would  have  the  rudest  and  most  barbaric  religion- 
religion  which  no  one  could  believe.  I  do  not  believe  that  it  is  showing 
real  respect  to  our  parents  to  believe  something  simply  because  they  did. 
Every  good  father  and  every  good  mother  wish  their  children  to  find  out 
more  than  they  knew;  every  good  father  wants  his  son  to  overcome  some 
obstacle  that  he  could  not  grapple  with;  and  if  you  wish  to  reflect  credit 
on  your  father  and  mother,  do  it  by  accomplishing  more  than  they  did, 
because  you  live  in  abetter  time.  Every  nation  has  had  what  you  call  a 
sacred  record,  and  the  older  the  more  sacred,  the  more  contradictory  and 
the  more  inspired  is  the  record.  We,  of  course,  are  not  an  exception,  and 
I  propose  to  talk  a  little  about  what  is  called  the  Pentateuch,  a  book,  or 
a  collection  of  books,  said  to  have  been  written  by  Moses.  And  right 
here  in  the  commencement  let  me  say  that  Moses  never  wrote  one  word 
of  the  Pentateuch— not  one  word  was  written  until  he  had  been  dust  and 
ashes  for  hundreds  of  years.  But  as  the  general  opinion  is  that  Moses 
wrote  these  books,  I  have  entitled  this  lecture  the  "The  Mistakes  of 
Moses."  For  the  sake  of  this  lecture,  we  will  admit  that  he  wrote  it. 
Nearly  every  maker  of  religion  has  commenced  by  making  the  world; 
and  it  is  one  of  the  safest  things  to  do,  because  no  one  can  contradict  as 
having  been  present,  and  it  gives  free  scope  to  the  imagination.     These 


100  MISTAKES  OF  INGERSOLL. 

books,  in  times  when  there  was  a  vast  difference  between  the  educated 
and  the  ignorant,  became  inspired  and  people  bowed  down  and  wor- 
shipped them. 

I  saw  a  little  while  ago  a  Bible  with  immense  oaken  covers,  with 
hasps  and  clasps  large  enough  almost  for  a  penitentiary,  and  I  can  imagine 
how  that  book  would  be  regarded  by  barbarians  in  Europe  when  not  more 
than  one  person  in  a  dozen  could  read  and  write.  In  imagination  I  saw 
it  carried  into  the  cathedral,  heard  the  chant  of  the  priest,  saw  the  swing- 
ing of  the  censer  and  the  smoke  rising;  and  when  that  Bible  was  put  on 
the  altar  I  can  imagine  the  barbarians  looking  at  it  and  wondering  what 
influence  that  black  book  could  have  on  their  lives  and  future.  I  do  not 
wonder  that  they  imagined  it  was  inspired.  None  of  them  could  write  a 
book,  and  consequently  when  they  saw  it  they  adored  it;  they  were 
stricken  with  awe;  and  rascals  look  advantage  of  that  awe. 

Now  they  say  that  the  book  is  inspired.  I  do  not  care  whether  it  is  or 
not;  the  question  is:  Is  it  true?  If  it  is  true  it  don't  need  to  be  inspired. 
Nothing  needs  inspiration  except  a  falsehood  or  a  mistake.  A  fact  never 
went  into  partnership  with  a  miracle.  Truth  scorns  the  assistance  of  won- 
ders. A  fact  will  fit  every  other  fact  in  the  universe,  and  that  is  how  you 
can  tell  whether  it  is  or  is  not  a  fact.  A  lie  will  not  fit  anything  except 
another  lie  made  for  the  express  purpose;  and,  finally,  some  one  gets  tired 
of  lying,  and  the  last  lie  will  not  fit  the  next  fact,  and  then  there  is  a 
chance  for  inspiration.  Right  then  and  there  a  miracle  is  needed.  The 
real  question  is :  In  the  light  of  science,  in  the  light  of  the  brain  and 
heart  of  the  nineteenth  century,  is  this  book  true  ?  The  gentlemen  who 
wrote  it  begins  by  telling  us  that  God  made  the  universe  out  of  nothing. 
That  I  cannot  conceive;  it  may  be  so,  but  I  cannot  conceive  it.  Nothing, 
regarded  in  the  light  of  raw  material,  is,  to  my  mind,  a  decided  and  dis- 
astrous failure.  I  cannot  imagine  of  nothing  being  made  into  something, 
any  more  than  I  can  of  something  being  changed  back  into  nothing.  ] 
cannot  conceive  of  force  aside  from  matter,  because  force  to  be  force  must 
be  active,  and  unless  there  is  matter  there  is  nothing  for  force  to  act  upon, 
and  consequently  it  cannot  be  active.  So  I  simply  say  1  cannot  compre- 
hend it.  I  cannot  beileve  it.  I  may  roast  for  this,  but  it  is  my  honest 
opinion.  The  next  thing  he  proceeds  to  tell  us  is  that  God  divided  the 
darkness  from  the  light;  and  right  here  let  me  say  when  1  speak  about 
God  I  simply  mean  the  being  described  by  the  Jews.  There  may  be 
in  immensity  some  being  beneath  whose  wing  the  universe  exists,  whose 
every  thought  is  a  glittering  star,  but  I  know  nothing  about  Him,— not 
the  slightest,— and  this  afternoon  I  am  simply  talking  about  the  being 
described  by  the  Jewish  people.  When  I  say  God,  I  mean  Him.  Moses 
describes  God  dividing  the  light  from  the  darkness.     I  suppose  that  at 


"MISTAKES  OF  MOSES."  101 

that  time  they  must  have  been  mixed.  You  can  readily  see  how  light  and 
darkness  can  get  mixed.  They  must  have  been  entities.  The  reason  I 
think  so  is  because  in  that  same  book  I  find  that  darkness  overspread 
Egypt  so  thick  that  it  could  be  felt,  and  they  used  to  have  on  exhibition 
in  Rome  a  bottle  of  the  darkness  that  once  overspread  Egypt.  The  gen- 
tleman who  wrote  this  in  imagination  saw  God  dividing  light  from  the 
darkness.  I  am  sure  the  man  who  wrote  it,  believed  darkness  to  be  an 
entity,  a  something,  a  tangible  thing  that  can  be  mixed  with  light. 

The  next  thing  that  he  informs  us  is  that  God  divided  the  waters  above 
the  firmanent  from  those  below  the  firmanent.  The  man  who  wrote  that 
believed  the  firmanent  to  be  a  solid  affair.  And  that  is  what  the  gods 
did.  You  recollect  the  gods  came  down  and  made  love  to  the  daughters 
of  men — and  I  never  blamed  them  for  it.  I  have  never  read  a  description 
of  any  heaven  I  would  not  leave  on  the  same  errand.  That  is  where  the 
gods  lived.  That  is  where  they  kept  the  water.  It  was  solid.  That  is 
the  reason  the  people  prayed  for  rain.  They  believed  that  an  angel  could 
take  a  lever,  raise  a  widow  and  let  out  the  desired  quantity.  I  find  in  the 
Psalms  that  "  He  bowed  the  heavens  and  came  down;"  and  we  read  that 
the  children  of  men  built  a  tower  to  reach  the  heavens  and  climb  into  the 
abode  of  the  gods.  The  man  who  wrote  that  believed  the  firmanent  to 
be  solid.  He  knew  nothing  about  the  laws  of  evaporation.  He  did  not 
know  that  the  sun  wooed  with  amorous  kiss  the  waves  of  the  sea,  and 
that,  disappointed,  their  vaporous  sighs  changed  to  tears  and  fell  again 
as  rain.  The  next  thing  he  tells  us  is  that  the  grass  began  to  grow,  and 
the  branches  of  the  trees  laughed  into  blossom,  and  the  grass  ran  up  the 
shoulder  of  the  hills,  and  yet  not  a  solitary  ray  of  light  had  left  the 
eternal  quiver  of  the  sun.  Not  a  blade  of  grass  had  ever  been  touched 
by  a  gleam  of  light.  And  I  do  not  think  that  grass  will  grow  to 
hurt  without  a  gleam  of  sunshine.  I  think  the  man  who  wrote  that 
simply  made  la  mistake,  and  is  excusable  to  a  certain  degree  The  next 
day  he  made  the  sun  and  moon — the  sun  to  rule  the  day  and  the  moon  to 
rule  the  night.  Do  you  think  the  man  who  wrote  that  knew  anything 
about  the  size  of  the  sun  ?  I  think  he  thought  it  was  about  three  feet  in 
diameter,  because  I  find  in  some  book  that  the  sun  was  stopped  a  whole 
day,  to  give  a  general  named  Joshua  time  to  kill  a  few  more  Amalekites; 
and  the  moon  was  stopped  also.  Now  it  seems  to  me  that  the  sun  would 
give  light  enough  without  stopping  the  moon;  but  as  they  were  in  the 
stopping  business  they  did  it  just  for  devilment.  At  another  time,  we 
read,  the  sun  was  turned  ten  degrees  backward  to  convince  Hezekiah 
that  he  was  not  going  to  die  of  a  boil.  How  much  easier  it  would  have 
been  to  cure  the  boil.  The  man  who  wrote  that  thought  the  sun  was  two 
or  three  feet  in  diameter,  and  could  be  stopped  and  pulled  around  like  the 


102  MISTAKES  OF  INGERSOLL. 

sun  and  moon  in  a  theatre.  Do  you  know  that  the  sun  throws  out  every 
second  of  time  as  much  heat  as  could  be  generated  by  burning  eleven 
thousand  millions  tons  of  coal?  I  don't  believe  tie  knew  that,  or  that  he 
knew  the  motion  of  the  earth.  I  don't  believe  he  knew  that  it  was  turn- 
ing' on  its  axis  at  the  rate  of  a  thousand  miles  an  hour,  because  if  he  did, 
he  would  have  understood  the  immensity  of  heat  that  would  have  been 
generated  by  stopping  the  world.  It  has  been  calculated  by  one  of  the 
best  mathematicians  and  astronomers  that  to  stop  the  world  would  cause 
as  much  h  at  as  it  would  take  to  burn  a  lump  of  solid  coal  three  times  as 
big  as  the  globe.  And  yet  we  find  in  that  book  that  the  sun  was  not  only 
stopped,  but  turned  back  ten  degrees,  simply  to  convince  a  gentleman 
that  he  was  not  going  to  die  of  a  boil.  They  may  say  I  will  be  damned 
if  I  do  not  believe  that,  and  I  tell  them  I  will  if  I  do. 

Then  he  gives  us  the  history  of  astronomy,  and  he  gives  it  to  us  in  five 
words:  "  He  made  the  stars  also."  He  came  very  near  forgetting  tne 
stars.  Do  you  believe  that  the  man  who  wrote  that  knew  that  there  are 
stars  as  much  larger  than  this  earth  as  this  earth  is  larger  than  the  apple 
which  Adam  and  Eve  are  said  to  have  eaten?  Do  you  believe  that  he 
knew  that  this  world  is  but  a  speck  in  the  shining,  glittering  universe  of 
existence  ?  I  would  gather  from  that  that  he  made  the  stars  after  he  got 
the  world  done.  The  telescope,  in  reading  the  infinite  leaves  of  the 
heavens,  has  ascertained  that  light  travels  at  the  rate  of  192,000  miles 
per  second,  and  it  would  require  millions  of  years  to  come  from  some  of 
the  stars  to  this  earth.  Yet  the  beams  of  those  stars  mingle  in  our 
atmosphere,  so  that  if  those  distant  orbs  were  fashioned  when  this  world 
began,  we  must  have  been  whirling  in  space  not  six  thousand,  but  many 
millions  of  years.  Do  you  believe  the  man  who  wrote  that  as  a  history 
of  astronomy  really  knew  that  this  world  was  but  a  speck  compared  with 
millions  of  sparkling  orbs  ?  I  do  not.  He  then  proceeds  to  tell  us  that 
God  made  fish  and  cattle,  and  that  man  and  woman  were  created  male 
and  female.  The  first  account  stops  at  the  second  verse  of  the  second 
chapter.  You  see,  the  Bible  originally  was  not  divided  into  chapters; 
the  first  Bible  that  was  ever  divided  into  chapters  in  our  language  was 
made  in  the  year  of  grace  1550.  The  Bible  was  originally  written  in  the 
Hebrew  language,  and  the  Hebrew  language  at  that  time  had  no  vowels 
in  writing.  It  was  written  entirely  with  consonants,  and  without  being 
divided  into  chapters  or  into  verses,  and  there  was  no  system  of  punctu- 
ation whatever.  After  you  go  home  to-night  write  an  English  sen  ence 
or  two  with  only  consonants  close  together,  and  you  will  find  that  it  will 
take  twice  as  much  inspiration  to  read  it  as  it  did  to  write  it.  When  the 
Bible  was  divided  into  verses  and  chapters,  the  divisions  were  not  always 
correct,  and  so  the  division  between  the  first  and  second  chapter  of  Gen- 


"MISTAKES  OF  MOSES."  103 

esis  is  not  in  the  right  place.  The  second  account  of  the  creation  com- 
mences at  the  third  verse,  and  it  differs  from  the  first  in  two  essential 
points.  In  the  first  account  man  is  the  last  made;  in  the  second,  man  is 
made  before  the  beasts.  In  the  first  account,  man  is  made  "  male  and 
female;  "  in  the  second  only  a  man  is  made,  and  there  is  no  intention  of 
making-  a  woman  whatever. 

You  will  find  by  reading- that  second  chapter  that  God  tried  to  palm 
off  on  Adam  a  beast  as  his  helpmeet.  Everybody  talks  about  the  Bible 
and  nobody  reads  it;  that  is  the  reason  it  is  so  generally  believed.  I  am 
probably  the  only  man  in  the  United  States  who  has  read  the  Bible 
through  this  year  I  have  wasted  that  time,  but  I  had  a  purpose  in 
view.  Just  read  it,  and  you  will  find,  about  the  twenty-third  verse,  that 
God  caused  all  the  animals  to  walk  before  Adam  in  order  that  he  might 
name  them.  And  the  animals  came  like  a  menagerie  into  town,  and  as 
Adam  looked  at  all  the  crawlers,  jumpers  and  creepers,  this  God  stood  by 
to  see  what  he  would  call  them.  After  this  procession  passed,  it  was 
pathetically  remarked,  "Yet  was  there  not  found  any  helpmeet  for 
Adam."  Adam  didn't  see  anything  that  he  could  fancy.  And  1  am  glad 
he  didn't.  If  he  had,  there  would  not  have  been  a  free-thinker  in  this 
world;  we  should  have  all  died  orthodox.  And  finding  Adam  was  so  par- 
ticular, God  had  to  make  him  a  helpmeet,  and  having  used  up  the  nothing 
he  was  compelled  to  take  part  of  the  man  to  make  the  woman  with,  and 
he  took  from  the  man  a  rib.  How  did  he  get  it?  And  then  imagine  a 
God  with  a  bone  in  his  hand,  and  about  to  start  a  woman,  trying  to  make 
up  his  mind  whether  to  make  a  blonde  or  a  brunette. 

Right  here  ft  is  only  proper  that  I  should  warn  you  of  the  consequences 
of  laughing  at  any  story  in  the  holy  Bible.  When  you  come  to  die,  your 
laughing  at  this  story  will  be  a  thorn  in  your  pillow.  As  you  look  back 
upon  the  record  of  your  life,  no  matter  how  many  men  you  have  wrecked 
and  ruined,  and  no  matter  how  many  women  you  have  deceived  and 
deserted — all  that  may  be  forgiven  you;  but  if  you  recollect  that  you  have 
laughed  at  God's  book  you  will  see  through  the  shadows  of  death, 
the  leering  looks  of  fiends  and  the  forked  tongues  of  devils.  Let  me  show 
you  how  it  will  be:  For  instance,  it  is  the  day  of  judgment.  When  the 
man  is  called  up  by  the  recording  secretary,  or  whoever  does  the  cross- 
examining,  he  says  to  his  soul:  "  Where  are  you  from'?"  "  I  am  from 
the  world."  "Yes,  sir.  What  kind  of  a  man  were  you?"  "Well,  I 
don't  like  to  talk  about  myself."  "But  you  have  to.  What  kind  of  a 
man  were  you?  "  "Well,  I  was  a  good  fellow;  1  loved  my  wife,  1  loved 
my  children.  My  home  was  my  heaven;  my  fireside  was  my  paradise, 
and  to  sit  there  and  see  the  lights  and  shadows  falling  on  the  faces  of 
those  I  love,  that  to  me  was  a  perpetual  joy.     I  never  gave  one  of  ti. 


104  MISTAKES  OF  1XGERSOLL. 

solitary  moment  of  pain.  I  don't  owe  a  dollar  in  the  world,  and  I  left 
enough  to  pay  my  funeral  expenses  and  keep  the  wolf  of  want  from  the 
door  of  the  house  I  loved.  That  is  the  kind  of  a  man  I  am."  "  Did  you 
belong-  to  any  church ?"  "I  did  not.  They  were  too  narrow  forme. 
They  were  always  expecting-  to  be  happy  simply  because  somebody  else 
was  to  be  damned."  "  Well,  did  you  believe  that  rib  story?"  "  What  rib- 
story?  Do  you  mean  that  Adam  and  Eve  business?  No,  I  did  not.  To 
tell  you  the  God's  truth,  that  was  a  little  more  than  I  could  swallow." 
"To  hell  with  him!  Next.  Where  are  you  from?"  "I'm  from  the 
world,  too."  "Do  you  belong  to  any  church?"  "  Yes,  sir,  and  to  the 
Young  Men's  Christian  Association."  "What  is  your  business?" 
"  Cashier  in  a  bank."  "  Did  you  ever  run  off  with  any  of  the  money?" 
"  I  don'tlike  to  tell,  sir."  "  Well,  but  you  have  to."  "  Yes,  sir;  I  did." 
"What  kind  of  a  bank  did  you  have?"  "  A  savings  bank."  "How 
much  did  you  run  off  with?"  "  One  hundred  thousand  dollars."  "  Did 
you  take  anything  else  along  with  you?"  "Yes,  sir."  "What?"  "1 
took  my  neighbor's  wife."  "  Did  you  have  a  wife  and  children  of  your 
own?"  "Yes,  sir."  "  And  you  deserted  them?"  "Oh,  yes;  bu  such 
was  my  confidence  in  God  that  I  believed  he  would  take  care  of  them." 
"  Have  you  heard  of  them  since?"  "  No,  sir."  "  Did  you  believe  that 
rib  story?"  ki  Ah,  bless  your  soul,  yes!  I  believe  all  of  it,  sir;  I  often 
used  to  be  sorry'that  there  were  not  harder  stories  yet  in  the  Bible,  so  that 
I  could  show  what  my  faith  could  do."  "  You  believed  it,  did  you?" 
"Yes,  with  all  my  heart."     "Give  him  a  harp." 

I  simply  wanted  to  show  you  how  important  it  is  to  believe  these  sto- 
ries. Of  all  the  authors  in  the  world  God  hates  a  critic  the  worst.  Hav- 
ing got  this  woman  done  he  brought  her  to  the  man,  and  they  started 
housekeeping,  and  a  few  minutes  afterward  a  snake  came  through  a  crack 
in  the  fence  and  commenced  to  talk  with  her  on  the  subject  of  fruit.  She 
was  not  acquainted  in  the  neighborhood,  and  she  did  not  know  whether 
snakes  talked  or  not,  or  whether  they  knew  anything  about  the  apples  or 
not.  Well,  she  was  misled,  and  the  husband  ate  some  of  those  apples 
and  laid  it  all  on  his  wife;  and  there  is  where  the  mistake  was  made. 
God  ought  to  have  rubbed  him  out  once.  He  might  have  known  that  no 
good  could  come  of  starting  the  world  with  a  man  like  that.  They  were 
turned  out.  Then  the  trouble  commenced,  and  people  got  worse  and 
worse.  God,  you  must  recollect,  was  holding  the  reins  of  government, 
but  he  did  nothing  for  them.  He  allowed  them  to  live  six  hundred  and 
sixty-nine  years  without  knowing  their  A.  B.  C  He  never  started  a 
school,  not  even  a  Sunday  school.  He  didn't  even  keep  His  own  boys  at 
home.  And  the  world  got  worse  every  day,  and  finally  he  concluded  to 
drown  them.     Yet  that  same  god  has  the  impudence  to  tell  me  how  to 


"MISTAKES  OF  MOSES."  105 

raise  my  own  children.  What  would  you  think  of  a  neighbor,  who  had  jnst 
killed  his  babes  giving-  you  his  views  on  domestic  economy?  God  found 
that  he  could  do  nothing  with  them  and  He  said.  "  I  will  drown  them 
all,  except  a  few."  And  He  picked  out  a  fellow  by  the  name  of  Noah, 
that  had  been  a  bachelor  for  five  hundred  years.  If  I  had  to  drown  any- 
body, I  would  have  drowned  him.  I  believe  that  Noah  had  then  been 
married  something  like  one  hundred  years.  God  told  him  to  build  a  boat, 
and  he  built  one  five  hundred  feet  long,  eighty  or  ninety  feet  broad  and 
fifty-five  feet  high,  with  one  door  shutting  on  the  outside,  and  one  win- 
dow twenty-two  inches  square.  If  Noah  had  any  hobby  in  the  world  it 
was  vetilation.  Then  into  this  ark  he  put  a  certain  number  of  all  the 
animals  in  the  world.  Naturalists  have  ascertained  that  at  that  time 
there  were  at  least  eleven  hundred  thousand  insects  necessary  to  go  into 
the  ark,  about  forty  thousand  mammalia,  sixteen  hundred  reptilia,  to  say 
nothing  about  the  mastodon,  the  elephant  and  the  animalcule,  of  which 
thousands  live  upon  a  single  leaf  and  which  cannot  be  seen  by  the  naked 
eye.  Noah  had  no  microscope,  and  yet  he  had  to  pick  them  out  by  pairs. 
You  have  no  idea  the  trouble  that  man  had.  Some  say  that  the  flood 
was  not  universal,  that  it  was  partial.  Why  then  did  God  say:  "  I  will 
destroy  every  living  thing  beneath  the  heavens."  If  it  was  partial  why 
did  Noah  save  the  birds?  An  ordinary  bird,  tending  strictly  to  business, 
can  beat  a  partial  flood.  Why  did  he  put  the  birds  in  there— the  eagles,  the 
vultures,  the  condors— if  it  was  only  a  partial  flood  ?  And  how  did  he 
get  them  in  there  ?  Were  they  inspired  to  go  there,  or  did  he  drive  them 
up?  Did  the  polar  bear  leave  his  home  of  ice  and  start  for  the  tropics 
inquiring  for  Noah;  or  could  the  kangaroo  come  from  Australia  unless 
he  was  inspired,  or  somebody  was  behind  him?  Then  there  are  animals 
on  this  hemisphere  not  on  that.  How  did  he  get  them  across?  And 
there  are  some  animals  which  would  be  very  unpleasant  in  an  ark  unless 
the  ventilation  was  very  perfect. 

When  he  got  the  animals  in  the  ark,  God  shut  the  door  and  Noah 
pulled  down  the  window.  And  then  it  began  to  rain,  and  it  kept  on 
raining  until  the  water  went  twenty-nme  feet  over  the  highest  mountain. 
Chimborazo,  then  as  now,  lifted  its  head  above  the  clouds,  and  then  as 
now,  there  sat  the  condor.  And  yet  the  waters  rose  and  rose  over  every 
mountain  in  the  world— twenty-nine  feet  above  the  highest  peaks,  cov- 
ered with  snow  and  ice.  How  dee  >  were  these  waters?  About  five  and 
a  half  miles.  How  long  did  it  rain?  Forty  days.  How  much  did  it 
have  to  rain  a  day  ?  About  eight  hundred  feet.  How  is  that  for  damp- 
ness ?  No  wonder  they  said  the  windows  of  the  heavens  were  open.  If  I 
had  been  there  I  would  have  said  the  whole  side  of  the  house  was  out.  How 
long  were  they  in  this  ark?    A  year  and  ten  days,  floating  around  with 


106  MISTAKES  OF  1NGERSOLL. 

no  rudder,  no  sail,  nobody  on  the  outside  at  all.  The  window  was  shut, 
and  there  was  no  door,  except  the  one  that  shut  on  the  outside.  Who 
ran  this  ark — who  took  care  of  it  ?  Finally  it  came  down  on  Mount  Ararat, 
a  peak  seventeen  thousand  feet  above  the  level  of  the  sea,  with  about 
three  thousand  feet  of  snow,  and  it  stopped  there  simply  to  give  the  ani- 
mals from  the  tropics  a  chance.  Then  Noah  opened  the  window  and  got 
a  breath  of  fresh  air,  and  he  let  out  all  the  animals;  and  then  Noah  took 
a  drink,  and  God  made  a  bargain  with  him  that  He  would  not  drown  us 
any  more,  and  He  put  a  rainbow  in  the  clouds  and  said:  "  When  I  see 
that  I  will  recollect  that  I  have  promised  not  to  drown  you."  Because 
if  it  was  not  for  that  He  is  apt  to  drown  us  at  any  moment.  Now  can 
anybody  believe  that  that  is  the  origin  of  the  rainbow?  Are  you  not 
all  familiar  with  the  natural  causes  which  bring  those  beautiful  arches 
before  our  eyes  ?  Then  the  people  started  out  again,  and  they  were  as 
bad  as  before.  Here  let  me  ask  why  God  did  not  make  Noah  in  the  first 
place?  He  knew  he  would  have  to  drown  Adam  and  Eve  and  all  his 
family.  Then  another  thing,  why  did  He  want  to  drown  the  animals? 
What  had  they  done?  What  crime  had  they  committed?  It  is  very 
hard  to  answer  these  questions — that  is,  for  a  man  who  has  only  been 
born  once.  After  a  while  they  tried  to  build  a  tower  to  get  into  heaven, 
and  the  gods  heard  about  it  and  said:  "Let's  go  down  and  see  what  man 
is  up  to."  They  came,  and  found  things  a  great  deal  worse  than  they 
thought,  and  thereupon  they  confounded  the  language  to  prevent  them 
succeeding,  so  that  the  fellow  up  above  could  not  shout  down  "mortar  " 
or  "  brick  ,;  to  the  one  below,  and  they  had  to  give  it  up.  Is  it  possible 
that  any  one  believes  that  that  is  the  reason  why  we  have  the  variety  of 
languages  in  the  world?  Do  you  know  that  language  is  born  of  human 
experience,  and  is  a  physical  science?  Do  you  know  that  every  word  has 
been  suggested  in  someway  by  the  feelings  or  observations  of  man — that 
there  are  words  as  tender  as  the  dawn,  as  serene  as  the  stars,  and  others 
as  wild  as  the  beasts?  Do  you  know  that  language  is  dying  and  being 
born  continually — that  every  language  has  its  cemetery  and  cradle,  its 
bud  and  blossom,  and  withered  leaf?  Man  has  loved,  enjoyed  and  suf- 
fered, and  language  is  simply  the  expression  he  gives  those  experiences. 
Then  the  world  began  to  divide,  and  the  Jewish  nation  was  started. 
Now  I  want  to  say  that  at  one  time  your  ancestors,  like  mine,  were  bar- 
barians. If  the  Jewish  people  had  to  write  these  books  now  they  would  be 
civilized  books,  and  I  do  not  hold  them  responsible  for  what  their  ancestors 
did.  We  find  the  Jewish  people  first  in  Canaan,  and  there  were  seventy 
of  them,  counting  Joseph  and  his  children  already  in  Egypt.  They  lived 
two  hundred  and  fifteen  years,  and  they  then  went  down  into  Egypt  and 
stayed  there  two  hundred  and  fifteen  years;   they  were  four  hundred  and 


"MISTAKES  OF  MOSES."  107 

thirty  years  in  Canaan  and  Egypt.  How  many  did  they  have  when 
they  went  to  Egypt?  Seventy.  How  many  were  they  at  the  end 
of  two  hundred  and  fifteen  years?  Three  millions.  That  is  a  good 
many.  We  had  at  the  time  of  the  Revolution  in  this  country  three  mil- 
lions of  people.  Since  that  time  there  have  been  tour  Roubles,  until  we 
have  forty-eight  millions  to-day.  How  many  would  the  Jews  number  at 
the  same  ratio nn  two  hundred  and  fifteen  years?  Call  it  eight  doubles 
and  we  have  forty  thousand.  But  instead  of  forty  thousand  they  had 
three  millions.  How  do  I  know  they  1  ad  three  millions?  Because  they 
had  six  hundred  thousand  men  of  war.  For  every  honest  voter  in  the 
State  of  Illinois  there  will  be  five  other  people,  and  there  are  always  more 
voters  than  men  of  war.  They  must  have  had  at  the  lowest  possible  esti- 
mate three  millions  of  people.  Is  that  true?  Is  there  a  minister  in  the 
city  of  Chicago  that  will  certify  to  his  own  idiocy  by  claiming  that  they 
could  have  increased  to  three  millions  by  that  time?  If  there  is,  let  him 
say  so.     Do  not  let  him  talk  about  the  civilizing  influence  of  a  lie. 

When  they  got  into  the  desert  they  took  a  census  to  see  how  many  first- 
born children  there  were.  They  found  they  had  twenty-two  thousand 
two  hundred  and  seventy-three  first  born  males.  It  is  reasonable  to  sup- 
po  e  there  was  about  the  same  number  of  first  born  girls,  or  forty-five 
thousand  first  born  c".  ildren.  There  must  have  been  about  as  many 
mothers  as  first-born  children.  Dividing  three  millions  by  forty-five 
thousand  mothers,  and  you  will  find  that  the  women  in  Israel  had  to  have 
on  the  average  sixty-eight  children  apiece.  Some  stories  are  too  thin. 
This  is  too  thick.  Now,  we  know  that  among  three  million  people  there 
will  be  about  three  hundred  births  a  day;  and  according  to  the  Old  Testa- 
ment, whenever  a  child  was  born  the  mother  had  to  make  a  sacrifice— a 
sin-offering  for  the  crime  of  having  boon  a  mother.  Ifthere  is  in  this  uni- 
verse anything  that  is  infinitely  pure,  it  is  a  mother  with  her  child  in  her 
arms.  Every  woman  had  to  have  a  sacrifice  of  a  couple  of  doves,  a  couple 
of  pigeons,  and  the  priests  had  to  eat  those  pigeons  in  the  most  holy  place. 
At  that  time  there  were  at  least  three  hundred  births  a  day,  and  the  priests 
had  to  cook  and  eat  those  pigeons  in  the  most  holy  place;  and  at  that 
time  there  were  only  three  priests.  Two  hundred  birds  apiece  per  day! 
I  look  upon  them  as  the  champion  bird-eaters  of  the  world. 

Then  where  were  these  Jews?  They  were  upon  the  desert  of  Sinai; 
and  Sahara  compared  to  that  is  a  garden.  Imagine  an  ocean  of  lava,  torn 
by  storm  and  vexed  by  tempest,  suddenly  gazed  at  by  a  Gorgon  and 
changed  to  stone.  Such  was  the  desert  of  Sinai.  The  whole  supplies  ot 
the  world  could  not  maintain  three  millions  of  people  on  the  desert  oi 
Sinai  for  forty  years.  It  would  cost  one  hundred  thousand  millions  of 
dollars,  and  would  bankrupt  Christendom.     And  yet   there  they  were 


108  MISTAKES  OF  INGERSOLL. 

with  flocks  and  herds — so  many  that  they  sacrificed  over  one  hundred  and 
fifty  thousand  first-born  lambs  at  one  time.  It  would  require  millions  of 
acres  to  support  those  flocks,  and  yet  there  was  no  blade  of  grass,  and 
there  is  no  account  of  it  raining  baled  hay.  They  sacrificed  one  hundred 
and  fifty  thousand  lambs,  and  the  blood  had  all  to  be  sprinkled  on  the 
altar  within  two  hours,  and  there  were  only  three  priests.  They  would 
have  to  sprinkle  the  blood  of  twelve  hundred  and  fifty  lambs  per  minute. 
Then  all  the  people  gathered  in  front  of  the  tabernacle  eighteen  feet  deep. 
Three  millions  of  people  would  make  a  column  six  miles  long.  Some 
reverend  gentlemen  say  they  were  ninety  feet  deep.  Well,  that  would 
make  a  column  of  over  a  mile. 

Where  were  these  people  going?  They  were  going  to  the  Holy  Land, 
How  large  was  it?  Twelve  thousand  square  miles — one-fifth  the  size  of 
Illinois — a  frightful  country,  covered  with  rocks  and  desolation.  There 
never  was  a  land  agent  in  the  city  of  Chicago  that  would  not  have  blushed 
with  shame  to  have  described  that  land  as  flowing  with  milk  and  honey. 
Do  you  believe  that  God  Almighty  ever  went  into  partnership  with 
hornets?  Is  it  necessary  unto  salvation?  God  said  to  the  Jews:  "  I  will 
send  hornets  before  you,  to  drive  out  the  Canaanites."  How  would  a 
hornet  know  a  Canaanite  ?  Is  it  possible  that  God  inspired  the  hornets 
— that  he  granted  letters  of  marque  and  reprisal  to  hornets?  I  am 
willing  to  admit  that  nothing  in  the  world  would  be  better  calculated  to 
make  a  man  leave  his  native  country  than  a  few  hornets  attending 
strictly  to  business.  God  said  "Kill  the  Canaanites  slowly."  Why? 
"  Lest  the  beasts  of  the  field  increase  upon  you."  How  many  Jews  were 
there?  Three  millions.  Going  to  a  country,  how  large ?  Twelve  thou- 
sand square  miles.  But  were  there  nations  already  in  this  Holy  Land  ? 
Yes,  there  were  seven  nations  "mightier  than  the  Jews."  Say  there 
would  be  twenty-one  millions  when  they  got  there,  or  twenty- four  millions 
with  themselves.  Yet  they  were  told  to  kill  them  slowly,  lest  the  beasts 
of  the  field  increase  upon  them.  Is  there  a  man  in  Chicago  that  believes 
that!  Then  what  does  he  teach  it  to  little  children  for ?  Let  him  tell 
the  truth. 

So  the  same  God  went  into  partnership  with  snakes.  The  children 
of  Israel  lived  on  manna— one  account  says  all  the  time,  and  another  only 
a  little  while.  That  is  the  reason  there  is  a  chance  for  commentaries, 
and  you  can  exercise  faith.  If  the  book  .was  reasonable  everybody  could 
get  to  heaven  in  a  moment.  But  whenever  it  looks  as  if  it  could  not  be 
that  way  and  you  believe,  you  are  almost  a  saint,  and  when  you  know  it 
is  not  that  way  and  believe  you  are  a  saint.  He  fed  them  on  manna. 
Now  manna  is  very  peculiar  stuff.  It  would  melt  in  the  sun,  and  yet 
they  used  to  cook  it  by  seething  and  baking.     I  would  as  soon  think  of 


"MISTAKES  OF  MOSES."  109 

frying  snow  or  boiling  icicles.  But  this  manna  had  other  peculiar  qual- 
ities. It  shrank  to  an  omer,  no  matter  how  much  they  gathered,  and 
swelled  up  to  an  omer,  no  matter  how  little  they  gathered.  "What  a 
magnificent  thing  manna  would  be  for  the  currency,  shrinking  and  swel- 
ling according  to  the  volume  of  business!  There  was  not  a  change  in  the 
bill  of  fare  for  forty  years,  and  they  knew  that  God  could  just  as  well  give 
them  three  square  meals  a  day.  They  remembered  about  the  cucumbers, 
and  the  melons,  and  the  leeks  and  the  onions  of  Egypt,  and  they  said: 
"  Our  souls  abhoreth  this  light  bread."  Then  this  God  got  mad — you 
know  cooks  are  always  touchy — and  thereupon  He  sent  snakes  to  bite 
the  men,  women  and  children.  He  also  sent  them  quails  in  wrath  and 
anger,  and  while  they  had  the  flesh  between  their  teeth,  He  struck 
thousands  of  them  dead.  He  always  acted  in  that  way,  all  of  a  sudden. 
People  had  no  chance  to  explain — no  chance  to  move  for  a  new  trial — 
nothing.  I  want  to  know  if  it  is  reasonable  he  should  kill  people  for 
asking  for  one  change  of  diet  in  forty  years.  Suppose  you  had  been 
boarding  with  an  old  lady  for  forty  years,  and  she  never  had  a  solitary 
thing  on  her  table  but  hash,  and  one  morning  you  said:  "  My  soul  abhor- 
eth hash.  "  *What  would  you  say  if  she  let  a  basketful  of  rattlesnakes 
upon  you  ?  Now  is  it  possible  for  people  to  believe  this  ?  The  Bible 
says  that  their  clothes  did  not  wax  old,  they  did  not  get  shiny  at  the 
knees  or  elbows;  and  their  shoes  did  not  wear  out.  They  grew  right 
along  with  them.  The  little  boy  starting  out  with  his  first  pants  grew 
up  and  his  pants  grew  with  him.  Some  commentators  have  insisted  that 
angels  attended  to  their  wardrobes.  I  never  could  believe  it.  Just  think 
of  one  angel  hunting  another  and  saying:  "There  goes  another  button." 
I  cannot  believe  it. 

There  must  be  a  mistake  somewhere  or  somehow.  Do  you  believe 
the  real  God— if  there  is  one— ever  killed  a  man  for  making  hair-oil? 
And  yet  you  find  in  the  Pentateuch  that  God  gave  Moses  a  recipe  for 
making  hair-oil  to  grease  Aaron's  beard;  and  s^aid  if  anybody  made  the 
same  hair- oil  he  should  be  killed.  And  He  gave  him  a  formula  for 
making  ointment,  and  He  said  if  anybody  made  ointment  like  that  he 
should  be  killed.  I  think  that  is  carrying  patent-laws  to  excess.  There 
must  be  some  mistake  about  it.  I  cannot  imagine  the  infinite  Creator 
of  all  the  shining  worlds  giving  a  recipe  for  hair-oil.  Do  you  believe 
that  the  real  God  came  down  to  Mount  Sinai  with  a  lot  of  patterns  for 
making  a  tabernacle— patterns  for  tongs,  for  snuffers,  and  such  things? 
Do  ypu  believe  that  God  came  down  on  that  mountain  and  told  Moses 
how  to  cut  a  coat,  and  how  it  should  be  trimmed?  What  would  an  infi- 
nite God  care  on  which  side  he  cut  the  breast,  what  color  the  fringe  was, 
or  how  the  buttons  were  placed?    Do  you  believe  God  told  Moses  to 


110  MISTAKES  OF  1NG1.ESOLL. 

make  curtains  of  fine  linen?  Where  did  they  get  their  flax  in  the  des- 
ert? How  did  they  weave  it?  Did  He  tell  him  to  make  things  of  gold, 
silver  and  precious  stones,  when  they  hadn't  them?  Is  it  possible  that 
God  told  them  not  to  eat  any  fruit  until  after  the  fourth  year  of  planting 
the  trees  ?  You  see  all  these  things  were  written  hundreds  of  years  after- 
wards, and  the  priests,  in  order  to  collect  the  tithes,  dated  the  laws  back. 
They  did  not  say,  "  This  is  our  law,"  but,  "  Thus  said  God  to  Moses  in 
the  wilderness."  Now,  can  you  believe  that?  Imagine  a  scene :  The 
eternal  God  tells  Moses,  "  Here  is  the  way  I  want  you  to  consecrate  my 
priests.  Catch  a  sheep  and  cut  his  throat. ' '  I  never  could  understand 
why  God  wanted  a  sheep  killed  just  because  a  man  had  done  a  mean 
trick;  perhaps  it  was  because  his  priests  were  fond  of  mutton.  He  tells 
Moses  further  to  take  some  of  the  blood  and  put  it  on  his  right  thumb,  a 
little  on  his  right  ear,  and  a  little  on  his  right  big  toe  ?  Do  you  believe 
God  ever  gave  such  instructions  for  the  consecration  of  His  priests  ?  If 
you  should  see  the  South  Sea  Islanders  going  through  such  a  perform- 
ance you  could  not  keep  your  face  straight.  And  will  you  tell  me  that  it 
had  to  be  done  in  order  to  consecrate  a  man  to  the  service  of  the  infinite 
God?    Supposing  the  blood  got  on  the  left  toe? 

Then  we  find  in  his  book  how  God  went  to  work  to  make  the  Egyp- 
tians let  the  Israelites  go.  Suppose  we  wish  to  make  a  treaty  with  the 
mikado  of  Japan,  and  Mr.  Hayes  sent  a  commissioner  there;  and  suppose 
he  should  employ  Hermann,  the  wonderful  German,  to  go  along  with 
him;  and  when  they  came  in  the  presence  of  the  mikado  Hermann  threw 
down  an  umbrella,  which  changed  into  a  turtle,  and  the  commissioner 
said:  "  That  is  my  certificate."  You  would  say  the  country  is  disgraced. 
You  would  say  the  president  of  a  republic  like  this  disgraces  himself  with 
jugglery.  Yet  we  are  told  God  sent  Moses  and  Aaron  before  Pharaoh, 
and  when  they  got  there  Moses  threw  down  a  stick  which  turned  into  a 
snake.  That  God  is  a  juggler— he  is  the  infinite  prestidigitator.  Is  that 
possible?  Was  that  really  a  snake,  or  was  it  the  appearance  of  a  snake? 
If  it  was  the  appearance  of  a  snake,  it  was  a  fraud.  Then  the  necroman- 
cers of  Egypt  were  sent  for,  and  they  threw  down  sticks,  which  turned 
into  snakes,  but  those  were  not  so  large  as  Moses1  snakes,  which  swal- 
lowed them.  I  maintain  that  it  is  just  as  hard  to  make  small  snakes  as 
it  is  to  make  large  ones;  the  only  difference  is  that  to  make  large  snakes 
either  larger  sticks  or  more  practice  is  required.  * 

Do  you  believe  that  God  rained  hail  on  the  innocent  cattle,  killing  them 
in  the  highways  and  in  the  field?  Why  should  he  inflict  punishment  on 
cattle  for  something  their  owners  had  done?  I  could  never  have  any 
respect  for  a  God  that  would  so  inflict  pain  upon  a  brute  beast  simply  on 
account  of  the  crime  of  its  owner.     Is  it  possible  that  God  worked  mira- 


"MISTAKES  OF  MOSES."  Ill 

cles  to  convince  Pharaoh  that  slavery  was  wrong?  Why  did  he  not  tell 
Pharaoh  that  any  nation  founded  on  slavery  could  not  stand?  Why  did  he 
not  tell  him,  "Your  government  is  founded  on  slavery,  and  it  will  go  down, 
and  the  sands  of  the  desert  will  hide  from  the  view  of  man  your  temples, 
your  altars,  and  your  fanes?  "  Why  did  he  not  speak  about  the  infamy 
of  slavery?  Because  he  believed  in  the  infamy  of  slavery  himself.  Can 
we  believe  that  God  will  allow  a  man  to  give  his  wife  the  right  of  divorce- 
ment and  make  the  mother  of  his  children  a  wanderer  and  a  vagrant. 
There  is  not  one  word  about  woman  in  the  Old  Testament  except  the  word 
of  shame  and  humiliation.  The  God  of  the  Bible  does  not  think  woman 
is  as  good  as  man.  She  was  never  worth  mentioning.  It  did  not  take 
the  pains  to  recount  the  death  of  the  mother  of  us  all.  I  have  no  respect 
for  any  book  that  does  not  treat  woman  as  the  equal  of  man.  And  if 
there  is  any  God  in  this  universe  who  thinks  more  of  me  than  he  thinks 
of  my  wife,  he  is  not  well  acquainted  with  both  of  us.  And  yet  they  say 
that  that  was  done  on  account  of  the  hardness  of  their  hearts ;  and  that  was 
done  in  a  community  where  the  law  was  so  fierce  that  it  stoned  a  man  to 
death  for  picking  up  sticks  on  Sunday.  Would  it  not  have  been  better 
to  stone  to  death  every  man  who  abused  his  wife  and  allowed  them  to 
pick  up  sticks  on  account  of  the  hardness  of  their  hearts  ?  If  God  wanted 
to  take  those  Jews  from  Egypt  to  the  land  of  Canaan,  why  didn't  He  do 
it  instantly?  If  He  was  going  to  do  a  miracle,  why  didn't  He  do  one 
worth  talking  about? 

After  God  had  killed  all  the  first-born  in  Egypt,  after  he  had  killed  all 
the  cattle,  still  Egypt  could  raise  an  army  that  could  put  to  flight  six  hun- 
dred thousand  men.  And  because  this  God  overwhelmed  the  Egypti.m 
army,  he  bragged  about  it  for  a  thousand  years,  repeatedly  calling  the 
attention  of  the  Jews  to  the  fact  that  he  overthrew  Pharaoh  and  his  hosts. 
Did  he  help  much  with  their  six  hundred  thousand  men  ?  We  find  by  the 
records  of  the  day  that  the  Egyptian  standing  army  at  that  time  was 
never  more  than  one  hundred  thousand  men.  Must  we  believe  all  these 
stories  in  order  to  get  to  Heaven  when  we  die?  Must  we  judge  of  a  man's 
character  by  the  number  of  stories  he  believes?  Are  we  to  get  to  Heaven 
by  creed  or  by  deed?  That  is  the  question.  Shall  we  reason,  or  shall  we 
simply  believe?  Ah,  but  they  say  the  Bible  is  not  inspired  about  those 
little  things.  The  Bible  says  the  rabbit  and  the  hare  chew  the  cud.  But 
they  do  not.  They  have  a  tremulous  motion  of  the  Up.  But  the  Being 
that  made  them  says  they  chew  the  cud.  The  Bible,  therefore,  is  not 
inspired  in  natural  history.  Is  it  inspired  in  its  astrology  ?  No.  Well, 
what  is  it  inspired  in?  In  its  law?  Thousands  of  people  say  that  if  it 
had  not  been  for  the  ten  commandments  we  would  not  have  known  any 
better  than  to  rob  and  steal.     Suppose  a  man  planted  an  acre  of  potatoes, 


112  MISTAKES  OF  INGERSOLL. 

hoed  them  all  summer,  and  dug:  them  in  the  fall ;  and  suppose  a  man  had 
sat  upon  the  fence  all  the  time  and  watched  him;  do  you  believe  it  would 
be  necessary  for  that  man  to  read  the  ten  commandments  to  find  out  who, 
in  his  judgment,  had  a  right  to  take  those  potatoes  ?  All  laws  against 
larceny  have  been  made  by  industry  to  protect  the  fruits  of  its  labor. 
Why  is  there  a  law  against  murder?  Simply  because  a  large  majority  of 
people  object  to  being  murdered.  That  is  all.  And  all  these  laws  were 
in  force  thousands  of  years  before  that  time. 

One  of  the  commandments  said  they  should  not  make  any  graven 
images,  and  that  was  the  death  of  art  in  Palestine.  No  sculptor  has 
ever  enriched  stone  with  the  divine  forms  of  beauty  in  that  country;  and 
any  commandment  that  is  the  death  of  art  is  not  a  good  commandment. 
But  they  say  the  Bible  is  morally  inspired;  and  they  tell  me  there  is  no 
civilization  without  this  Bible.  Then  God  knows  that  just  as  well  as  you 
do.  God  always  knew  it,  and  if  you  can't  civilize  a  nation  without  a 
Bible,  why  didn't  God  give  every  nation  just  one  Bible  to  start  with? 
Why  did  God  allow  hundreds  of  thousands  and  billions  of  billions  to  go- 
down  to  hell  just  for  the  lack  of  a  Bible?  They  say  that  it  is  morally  in- 
spired. Well,  let  us  examine  it.  I  want  to  be  fair  about  this  thing,  be- 
cause I  am  willing  to  stake  my  salvation  or  damnation  upon  this  ques- 
tion— whether  the  Bible  is  true  or  not.  I  say  it  is  not;  and  upon  that  I 
am  willing  to  wager  my  soul.  Is  there  a  woman  here  who  believes  in  the 
institution  of  polygamy?  Is  there  a  man  here  who  believes  in  that  in- 
famy? You  say:  "No,  we  do  not."  Then  you  are  better  than  your 
God  was  four  thousand  years  ago.  Four  thousand  years  ago  he  believed 
in  it,  taught  it  and  upheld  it.  I  pronounce  it  and  denounce  it  the  infa- 
my of  infamies.  It  robs  our  language  of  every  sweet  and  tender  word 
in  it.  It  takes  the  fireside  away  forever.  It  takes  the  meaning  out  of  the 
words  father,  mother,  sister,  brother,  and  turns  the  temple  of  love  into 
a  vile  den  where  crawl  the  slimy  snakes  of  lust  and  hatred.  I  was  in 
Utah  a  little  while  ago,  and  was  on  the  mountain  where  God  used  to  talk 
to  Brigham  Young.  He  never  said  anything  to  me.  I  said  it  was  just  as 
reasonable  that  God  in  the  nineteenth  century  should  talk  to  a  polygamist 
in  Utah  as  it  was  that  four  thousand  years  ago,  on  Mount  Sinai,  he  talked 
to  Moses  upon  that  hellish  and  damnable  question. 

I  have  no  love  for  any  God  who  believes  in  polygamy.  There  is  no 
heaven  on  this  earth  save  where  the  one  woman  loves  the  one  man  anf1 
the  one  man  loves  the  one  woman.  I  guess  it  is  not  inspired  on  the 
polygamy  question.  Maybe  it  is  inspired  about  religious  liberty.  God 
says  that  if  anybody  differs  with  you  about  religion,  "kill  him."  He 
told  His  peculiar  people,  "If  any  one  teaches  a  different  religion,  kill 
himl  "    He  did  not  say,  "  Try  and  convince  him  that  he  is  wrong, "  but 


"MISTAKES  OF  MOSES."  113 

"kill  him!"  He  did  not  say,  "  I  am  in  the  miracle  business,  and  I  will 
convince  him ; "  but "  kill  him. ' '  He  said  to  every  husband,  ■ '  If  your  wife, 
that  you  love  as  you  love  your  own  soul,  says,  '  let  us  go  and  worship 
other  gods,'  then  'thy  hand  shall  be  first  upon  her  and  she  shall  be 
stoned  with  stones  until  she  dies. ' ' '  Well,  now,  I  hate  a  God  of  that  kind, 
and  I  cannot  think  of  being  nearer  heaven  than  to  be  away  from  Him.  A 
God  tells  a  man  to  kill  his  wife  simply  because  she  differs  with  him  on 
religion!  If  the  real  God  were  to  tell  me  to  kill  my  wife,  I  would  not  do 
it.  If  you  had  lived  in  Palestine  at  that  time,  and  your  wife— the  mother  of 
your  children— had  woke  up  at  night  and  said:  "Iain  tired  of  Jehovah. 
He  is  always  turning  up  that  board-bill.  He  is  always  telling  about 
whipping  the  Egyptians.  He  is  always  killing  somebody.  I  am  tired  of 
Him.  Let  us  worship  the  sun.  The  sun  has  clothed  the  world  in  beauty; 
it  has  covered  the  earth  with  green  and  flowers;  by  its  divine  light  I  first 
saw  your  face;  its  light  has  enabled  me  to  look  into  the  eyes  of  my  beautiful 
babe.  Let  us  worship  the  sun,  father  and  mother  of  light  and  love  and 
joy/'  Then  what  would  it  be  your  duty  to  do— kill  her?  Do  you  be- 
lieve any  real  god  ever  did  that  ?  Your  hand  should  be  first  upon  her, 
and  when  you  took  up  some  ragged  rock  and  hurled  it  against  the  white 
bosom  filled  with  love  for  you,  and  saw  running  away  the  red  current  of 
her  sweet  life,  then  you  would  look  up  to  heaven  and  receive  the  con- 
gratulations of  the  infinite  fiend  whose  commandments  you  had  to  obey. 
I  guess  the  Bible  was  not  inspired  about  religious  liberty.  Let  me  ask 
you  right  here :  Suppose,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  God  gave  those  laws  to  the 
Jews  and  told  them  "  whenever  a  man  preaches  a  different  religion,  kill 
him,"  and  suppose  that  afterwards  the  same  God  took  upon  himself 
flesh,  and  came  to  the  world  and  taught  and  preached  a  different  re- 
ligion, and  the  Jews  crucified  him — did  he  not  reap  exactly  what  he 
sowed  ? 

May  be  this  book  is  inspired  about  war.  God  told  the  Israelites  to 
overrun  that  country,  and  kill  every  man,  woman  and  child  for  defending 
their  native  land.  Kill  the  old  men?  Yes.  Kill  the  women?  Certainly. 
And  the  little  dimpled  babes  in  the  cradle,  that  smile  and  coo  in  the  face 
of  murder — dash  out  their  brains;  that  is  the  will  of  God.  Will  you  tell 
me  that  any  god  ever  commanded  such  infamy?  Kill  the  men  and  the 
women,  and  the  young  men  and  the  babes!  "What  shall  we  do  with 
the  maidens?"  "  Give  them  to  the  rabble  murderers!"  Do  you  believe 
that  God  ever  allowed  the  roses  of  love  and  the  violets  of  modesty  that 
shed  their  perfume  in  the  heart  of  a  maiden  to  be  trampled  beneath  the 
brutal  feet  of  lust?  If  there  is  any  God,  I  pray  him  to  write  in  the  book 
of  eternal  remembrance  opposite  to  my  name,  that  I  denied  that  lie. 
Whenever  a  woman  reads  a  Bible  and  comes  to  that  passage,  she  ought 
8 


114  MISTAKES  OF  INGERSOLL. 

to  throw  the  book  from  her  in  contempt  and  scorn.  Do  you  tell  me  that 
any  decent  god  would  do  that?  What  would  the" devil  have  done  under 
the  same  circumstances?  Just  think  of  it;  and  yet  that  is  the  God  that 
we  want  to  get  into  the  Constitution.  That  is  the  God  we  teach  our 
children  about,  so  that  they  will  be  sweet  and  tender,  amiable  and  kind  \ 
That  monster — that  fiend!  I  guess  the  Bible  is  not  inspired  about  relig- 
ious liberty,  nor  about  war. 

Then,  if  it  is  not  inspired  about  these  things,  maybe  it  is  inspired 
about  slavery.  God  tells  the  Jews  to  buy  up  the  children  of  the  heathen 
round  about  and  they  should  be  servants  for  them.  What  is  a  "  ser- 
vant? "  If  they  struck  a  "  servant  "  and  he  died  immediately,  punish- 
ment was  to  follow;  but  if  the  injured  man  should  linger  a  while,  there 
was  no  punishment,  because  the  servant  represented  their  money!  Do 
you  believe  that  it  is  right — that  God  made  one  man  to  work  for  another 
and  to  receive  pay  in  rations  ?  Do  you  believe  God  said  that  a  whip  on 
the  naked  back  was  the  legal  tender  for  labor  performed?  Is  it  possible 
that  the  real  God  ever  gave  such  infamous,  blood-thirsty  laws?  Vyhat 
more  does  he  say?  When  the  time  of  a  married  slave  expired,  he  could 
not  take  his  wife  and  children  with  him.  Then  if  the  slave  did  not  wish 
to  desert  his  family,  he  had  his  ears  pierced  with  an  awl,  and  became  his 
master's  property  forever.  Do  you  believe  that  God  ever  turned  the 
dimpled  checks  of  little  children  into  iron  chains  to  hold  a  man  in  slave- 
ry ?  Do  you  know  that  a  God  like  that  would  not  make  a  respectable 
devil?  I  want  none  of  his  mercy.  I  want  no  part  and  no  lot  in  the 
heaven  of  such  a  God.  I  will  go  to  'perdition,  where  there  is  human 
sympathy.  The  only  voice  we  have  ever  had  from  either  of  those  other 
worlds  came  from  hell.  There  was  a  rich  man  who  prayed  his  brothers 
to  attend  to  Lazarus  so  that  they  might  "  not  come  to  this  place."  That 
is  the  only  instance,  so  far  as  we  know,  of  souls  across  the  river  having 
any  sympathy.  And  I  would  rather  be  in  hell,  asking  for  water,  than  in 
heaven  denying  that  petition.  Well,  what  is  this  book  inspired  about? 
Where  does  the  inspiration  come  from  ?  Why  was  it  that  so  many  ani- 
mals were  killed  ?  It  was  simply  to  make  atonement  for  man — that  is  all. 
They  killed  something  that  had  not  committed  a  crime,  in  order  that  the 
one  who  had  committed  the  crime  might  be  acquitted.  Based  upon  that 
idea  is  the  atonement  of  the  Christian  religion.  That  is  the  reason  I 
attack  this  book — because  it  is  the  basis  of  another  infamy,  viz :  that  one 
man  can  be  good  for  another,  or  that  one  man  can  sin  for  another.  I 
deny  it.  You  have  got  to  be  good  for  yourself ;  you  have  got  to  sin  for 
yourself.  The  trouble  about  the  atonement  is,  that  it  saves  the  wrong 
man.  For  instance,  I  kill  some  one.  He  is  a  good  man.  He  loves  his 
wife  and  children  and  tries  to  make  them  happy;  but  he  is  not  a  Chris- 


"MISTAKES  OF  MOSES."  115 

tian,  and  he  goes  to  hell.  Just  as  soon  as  I  am  convicted  and  cannot  get 
a  pardon  I  get  religion,  and  I  go  to  heaven.  The  hand  of  mercy  cannot 
reach  down  through  the  shadows  of  hell  to  my  victim. 

There  is  no  atonement  for  the  saint — only  for  the  sinner  and  the  crim- 
inal. The  atonement  saves  the  wrong  man.  I  have  said  that  I  would 
never  make  a  lecture  at  all  without  attacking  this  doctrine.  I  did  not 
care  what  I  started  out  on.  I  was  always  going  to  attack  this  doctrine. 
And  in  my  conclusion  I  want  to  draw  you  a  few  pictures  of  the  Christian 
heaven.  But  before  I  do  that  I  want  to  say  the  rest  I  have  to  say  about 
Moses.  I  want  you  to  understand  that  the  Bible  was  never  printed  until 
1488.  I  want  you  to  know  that  up  to  that  time  it  was  in  manuscript,  in 
possession  of  those  who  could  change  it  if  they  wished;  and  they  did 
change  it,  because  no  two  ever  agreed.  Much  of  it  was  in  the  waste  bas- 
ket of  credulity,  in  the  open  mouth  of  tradition,  and  in  the  dull  ear  of 
memory.  I  want  you  also  to  know  that  the  Jews  themselves  never  agreed 
as  to  what  books  were  inspired,  and  that  there  were  a  lot  of  books  written 
that  were  not  incorporated  in  the  Old  Testament.  I  want  you  to  know 
that  two  or  three  years  before  Christ,  the  Hebrew  manuscript  was  trans- 
lated into  Greek,  and  that  the  original  from  which  the  translation  was 
made  has  never  been  seen  since.  Some  Latin  Bibles  were  found  in  Africa 
but  no  two  agreed;  and  then  they  translated  the  Septuagint  into  the  lan- 
guages of  Europe,  and  no  two  agreed.  Henry  VIII.  took  a  little  time 
between  murdering  his  wives  to  see  that  the  Word  of  God  was  translated 
correctly.  You  must  recollect  that  we  are  indebted  to  murderers  for  our 
Bibles  and  our  creeds.  Constantine,  who  helped  on  the  good  work  in  its 
early  stage,  murdered  his  wife  and  child,  mingling  their  blood  with  the 
blood  of  the  Savior. 

The  Bible  that  Henry  VIII.  got  up  did  not  suit,  and  then  his  daughter, 
the  murderess  of  Mary,  Queen  of  Scotts,  got  up  another  edition,  which  also 
did  not  suit;  and  finally,  that  philosophical  idiot,  King  James,  prepared 
the  edition  which  we  now  have.  There  are  at  least  one  hundred  thousand 
errors  in  the  Old  Testament,  but  everybody  sees  that  it  is  not  enough  to 
invalidate  its  claim  to  infallibility.  But  these  errors  are  gradually  being 
fixed,  and  hereafter  the  prophet  will  be  fed  by  Arabs  instead  of  "ravens," 
and  Samson's  three  hundred  foxes  will  be  three  hundred  "sheaves" 
already  bound,  which  were  fired  and  thrown  into  the  standing  wheat.  1 
want  you  all  to  know  that  there  was  no  contemporaneous  literature  at  the 
time  the  Bible  was  composed,  and  that  the  Jews  were  infinitely  ignorant 
in  their  day  and  generation— that  they  were  isolated  by  bigotry  and  wick- 
edness from  the  rest  of  the  world.  I  want  you  to  know  that  there  are 
fourteen  hundred  millions  of  people  in  the  world;  and  that  with  all  the 
talk  and  work  of  the  societies,  only  one  hundred  and  twenty  millions  have 


116  MISTAKES  OF  INGEBSOLL. 

got  Bibles.  1  want  you  to  understand  that  not  one  person  in  one  hundred 
in  this  world  ever  read  the  Bible,  and  no  two  ever  understood  it  alike  who 
did  read  it,  and  that  no  one  person  probably  ever  understood  it  aright. 
I  want  you  to  understand  that  where  this  Bible  has  been,  man  has  hated 
his  brother — there  have  been  dungeons,  racks,  thumbscrews,  and  the 
sword.  I  want  you  to  know  that  the  cross  has  been  in  partnership  with 
the  sword,  and  that  the  religion  of  Jesus  Christ  was  established  by  mur- 
derers, tyrants  and  hypocrites.  I  want  you  to  know  that  the  church 
carried  the  black  flag.  Then  talk  about  the  civilizing  influence  of  this 
religion ! 

Now,  I  want  to  give  an  idea  or  two  in  regard  to  the  Christian's  heaven. 
Of  all  the  selfish  things  in  this  world,  it  is  one  man  wanting  to  get  to 
heaven,  caring  nothing  what  becomes  of  the  rest  of  mankind.  "If  I 
can  only  get  my  little  soul  in!  "  I  have  always  noticed  that  the  people 
who  have  the  smallest  souls  make  the  most  fuss  about  getting  them  saved. 
Here  is  what  we  are  taught  by  the  church  to-day.  We  are  taught  by  it 
that  fathers  and  mothers,  brothers  and  sisters  can  all  be  happy  in  heaven, 
no  matter  who  may  be  in  hell;  that  the  husband  can  be  happy  there 
with  the  wife  that  would  have  died  for  him  at  any  moment  of  his  life  in 
hell.  But  they  say,  "We  don't  believe  in  fire.  What  we  believe  in  now 
is  remorse."  What  will  you  have  remorse  for?  For  the  mean  things 
you  have  done  when  you  are  in  hell?  Will  you  have  any  remorse  for  the 
mean  things  you  have  done  when  you  are  in  heaven?  Or  will  you  be  so 
good  then  that  you  won't  care  how  you  used  to  be?  Do  n't  you  see  what 
an  infinitely  mean  belief  that  is?  I  tell  you  to-day  that,  no  matter  in 
what  heaven  you  may  be,  no  matter  in  what  star  you  are  spending 
the  summer,  if  you  meet  another  man  whom  you  have  wronged  you 
will  drop  a  little  behind  in  the  tune.  And,  no  matter  in  what  part 
of  hell  you  are,  and  you  meet  some  one  whom  you  have  succored,  whose 
nakedness  you  have  clothed,  and  whose  famine  you  have  fed,  the  fire  will 
cool  up  a  little.  According  to  this  Christian  doctrine,  when  you  are  in 
heaven  you  won't  care  how  mean  you  were  once.  What  must  be  the 
social  condition  of  a  gentleman  in  heaven  who  will  admit  that  he  never 
would  have  been  there  if  he  had  not  got  scared  ?  What  must  be  the 
social  position  of  an  angel  who  will  always  admit  that  if  another  had  not 
pitied  him  he  ought  to  have  been  damned?  Is  it  a  compliment  to  an  infi- 
nite God  to  say  that  every  being  He  ever  made  deserved  to  be  damned 
the  minute  He  got  him  done,  and  that  He  will  damn  everybody  He  has 
not  had  a  chance  to  make  over?  Is  it  possible  that  somebody  else  can  be 
good  for  me,  and  that  this  doctrine  of  the  atonement  is  the  only  anchor 
for  the  human  soul  ? 

For  instance:  here  is  a  man  seventy  years  of  age,  who  has  been  a 


"MISTAKES  OF  MOSES."  117 

splendid  fellow  and  lived  according  to  the  laws  of*  nature.  He  has  got 
about  him  splendid  children,  whom  he  has  loved  and  cared  for  with  all 
his  heart.  But  he  did  not  happen  to  believe  in  this  Bible;  he  did  not 
believe  in  the  Pentateuch.  He  did  not  believe  that  because  some  child- 
ren made  fun  of  a  gentleman  who  was  short  of  hair,  God  sent  two  bears 
and  tore  the  little  darlings  to  pieces.  He  had  a  tender  heart,  and  he 
thought  about  the  mothers  who  would  take  the  pieces,  the  bloody  frag- 
ments of  the  children,  and  press  them  to  their  bosom  in  a  frenzy  of  grief; 
he  thought  about  their  wails  and  lamentations,  and  could  not  believe 
that  God  was  such  an  infinite  monster.  That  was  all  he  thought,  but  be 
went  to  Hell.  Then,  there  is  another  man  who  made  a  hell  on  earth  for 
his  wife,  who  had  to  be  taken  to  the  insane  asylum,  and  his  children 
were  driven  from  home  and  were  wanderers  and  vagrants  in  the  world. 
But  just  between  the  last  sin  and  the  last  breath,  this  fellow  got  religion, 
and  he  never  did  another  thing  except  to  take  his  medicine.  He  never 
did  a  solitary  human  being  a  favor,  and  he  died  and  went  to  heaven. 
Do  n't  you  think  he  would  be  astonished  to  see  that  other  man  in  hell, 
and  say  to  himself,  "  Is  it  possible  that  such  a  splendid  character  should 
bear  such  fruit,  and  that  all  my  rascality  at  last  has  brought  me  next  to 
God?"    * 

Or,  let  us  put  another  ease.  You  were  once  alone  in  the  desert — no 
provisions,  no  water,  no  hope.  Just  when  your  life  was  at  its  lowest  ebb, 
a  man  appeared,  gave  you  water  and  food  and  brought  you  safely  out. 
How  you  would  bless  that  man.  Time  rolls  on.  You  die  and  go  to 
heaven;  and  one  day  you  see  through  the  black  night  of  hell,  the  friend 
who  saved  your  life,  begging  for  a  drop  of  water  to  cool  his  parched  lips. 
He  cries  to  you,  "  Remember  what  I  did  in  the  desert— give  me  to  drink." 
How  mean,  how  contemptible  you  would  feel  to  see  his  suffering  and  be 
unable  to  relieve  him.  But  this  is  the  Christian  heaven.  We  sit  by  the 
fireside  and  see  the  flames  and  the  sparks  fly  up  the  chimney— everybody 
happy,  and  the  cold  wind  and  sleet  are  beating  on  the  window,  and  out 
on  the  doorstep  is  a  mother  with  a  child  on  her  breast  freezing.  How 
happy  it  makes  a  fireside,  that  beautiful  contrast.  And  we  say  "  God  is 
good,"  and  there  we  sit,  and  she  sits  and  moans,  not  one  night  but  for- 
ever. Or  we  are  sitting  at  the  table  with  our  wives  and  children,  even- 
body  eating,  happy  and  delighted,  and  Famine  comes  and  pushes  out  its 
shriveled  palms,  and,  with  hungry  eyes,  implores  us  for  a  crust.  How 
that  would  increase  the  appetite!  And  yet  that  is  the  Christian  heaven. 
Don't  you  see  that  these  infamous  doctrines  petrify  the  human  heart? 
And  I  would  have  every  one  who  hears  me,  swear  that  he  will  never  con- 
tribute another  dollar  to  build  another  church,  in  which  is  taught  such 
infamous  lies.     I  want  every  one  of  you  to  say  that  you  never  will,  direct- 


118  MISTAKES  OF  INGERSOLL. 

ly  or  indirectly,  give  a  dollar  to  any  man  to  preach  that  falsehood.  Tt 
has  done  harm  enough.  It  has  covered  the  world  with  blood.  It  has 
filled  the  asylums  for  the  insane.  It  has  cast  a  shadow  in  the  heart,  in 
the  sunlight  of  every  good  and  tender  man  and  woman.  I  say  let  us  rid 
the  heavens  of  this  monster,  and  write  upon  the  dome  "Liberty,  love 
and  law." 

No  matter  what  may  come  to  me  or  what  may  come  to  you,  let  us  do 
exactly  what  we  believe  to  be  right,  and  let  us  give  the  exact  thought  in 
our  brains.  Rather  than  have  this  Christianity  true,  I  would  rather  all 
the  gods  would  destroy  themselves  this  morning.  I  would  rather  the 
whole  universe  would  go  to  nothing,  if  such  a  thing  were  possible,  this 
instant.  Rather  than  have  the  glittering  dome  of  pleasure  reared  on  the 
eternal  abyss  of  pain,  I  would  see  the  utter  and  eternal  destruction  of  this 
universe.  I  would  rather  see  the  shining  fabric  of  our  universe  crumble 
to  unmeaning  chao&,  and  take  itself  where  oblivion  broods  and  memory 
forgets.  I  would  rather  the  blind  Samson  of  some  imprisoned  force,  re- 
leased by  thoughtless  chance,  should  so  rack  and  strain  this  world  that 
man  in  stress  and  straint,  in  astonishment  and  fear,  should  suddenly  fall 
back  to  savagery  and  barbarity.  I  would  rather  that  this  thrilled  and 
thrilling  globe,  shorn  of  all  life,  should  in  its  cycles  rub  the  wheel,  the 
parent  s.ar.  on  which  the  light  should  fall  as  fruitlessly  as  falls  the  gaze 
of  love  on  death,  than  to  have  this  infamous  doctrine  of  eternal  punish- 
ment true;  rather  than  have  this  infamous  selfishness  of  a  heaven  for  a 
few  and  a  hell  for  the  many  established  as  the  word  of  God! 

One  world  at  a  time  is  my  doctrine.  Let  us  make  some  one  happy 
here.  Happiness  is  the  interest  that  a  decent  action  draws,  and  the  more 
decent  actions  you  do,  the  larger  your  income  will  be.  Let  every  man 
try  to  make  his  wife  happy,  his  children  happy.  Let  every  man  try  to 
make  every  day  a  joy,  and  God  cannot  afford  to  damn  such  a  man.  I 
cannot  help  God;  I  cannot  injure  God.  I  can  help  people;  I  can  injure 
people.     Consequently  humanity  is  the  only  real  religion. 

I  cannot  better  close  this  lecture  than  by  quoting  four  lines  from 
Robert  Burns: 

"  To  make  a  happy  fireside  clime 
To  weans  and  wife— 
That's  the  true  pathos  and  sublime 
Of  human  life." 


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MISTAKES  of  INGERSOLL 

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MISTAKES  of   INGERSOLL 

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Edited  by  J.  B.  McCLUKE. 
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This  book  contains  the  many  interesting  incidents,  and  all  the  essen- 
tial facts,  connected  with  the  life  of  the  great  inventor,  together  with  a  full 
explanation  of  his  principal  inventions,  including  the  phonograph,  tele- 
phone, and  electric  light,  which  are  explained  by  the  aid  of  diagrams. 


OPINIONS  OF  THE  PRESS. 

"  Edison  and  His  Inventions"  is  one  of  t.ie  latest  and  most  entertaining  books 
that  has  been  laid  ■  n  our  table.  A  glance  at  the  title-page  assures  us  that  the  book 
cannot  fail  to  be  interesting  when  we  ^ee  that  it  has  been  compiled  by  Mr.  J.  B. 
McClure,  of  the  well  known  firm  of  Rhodes  &  McClure.  Mr.  McClure  "has  spent 
months  in  correspondence  with  parties  who  were  acquainted  with  Edison  in  his 
bovhood  days,  and  also  wiih  the  parents  of  the  great  inventor,  who  have  fur- 
nished numerous  amusing  anecdotes  which  have  not  as  yet  been  ma  ;e  public. 
The  tasimeter.  phonograph,  telephone,  and  all  his  inventions,  are  illustrated,  and 
the  details  explained  in  such  a  manner  that  they  can  be  understood  by  every 
one. — The  Interior. 

"If  Mr.  Edison's  head  is  not  turned  by  his  numerous  successes  in  wonderful 
discovery  and  invention,  he  must  have  a  level  head.  Just  as  the  announcement 
arrives,  that  the  electric  light  is  to  be  tested  in  the  Capitol  at  Washington,  a  book 
is  laid  on  our  table,  entitled  "Edison  and  his  Inventions,''  which,  as  the  title 
implies,  relates  to  the  man  as  well  as  his  work.  It  gives  many  interesting  anec- 
dotes of  this  odd  genius,  with  full  explanations  of  the  telephone,  phonograph, 
tasimiter,  and  last,  and  per  aps  most  important  of  all,  the  results  of  his  electric 
light  iriumph.  Numerous  cuts  make  it  <  ompar  tively  easy  for  e^en  the  unscien- 
tific to  understand  the  descriptive  parts."— Editorial  in  the  Advance. 

"  This  volume  of  Mr.  McClure's  is  one  that  will  interest  every  reader.  It  is  a 
graphic  sketch  of  the  incidents,  anecdotes,  and-intc-esting  particulars  of  his  life. 
He  trives  a  clear  and  concise  explanation  of  the  telephone,  phonograph,  and 
many  others  of  the  leading  discoveries.  The  volume  has  many  illustrations. 
Not  onlv  those  older  will  read  it  with  interest,  but  it  is  a  book  full  of  valuable 
instruction  to  the  young,  for  its  facts  and  for  its  suggestive  thoughts."— The  Imter- 
Ocean. 

"  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  Edison  is  a  remarkable  man.  He  has  already 
accomplished  more  in  the  way  of  invention  than  any  man  unon  record,  at  so 
early  an  age— thirty-two.  His  career  has  been  full  bf  adventure,  of  a  certain 
kind,  and  the  story  of  it  is  exceedingly  interesting.  Mr.  McClure  has  gathered 
his  material  with  great  industry,  and  so  used  it  as  to  make  a  very  readable  book. 
An  excellent  idea  is  given  both  of  the  man  and  of  his  work."— The  Standard. 

"  Mr.  McClure  has  done  a  good  th;ng  in  bringing  together  so  much  authentic 
information  that  relates  to  the  man  and  his  work.  It  is  the  story  of  the  patient 
evolution  of  genuine  talent,  its  discouragements  and  triumphs,  with  enough  of 
personality  to  give  additional  zest  to  the  narrative." — Chicago  Evening  Journal. 

"Presents  :'n  an  interesting  manner  the  account  of  the  life  of  the  greatest 
inventor  of  the  present  time."—  Northwestern  Christian  Advocate. 

Sent  by  mail,  post  vaid,  on  receipt  of  prion  by  the  Publishers. 
Liberal  discount  to  the  Trade. 


AND  HIS  INVENTIONS. 


171 


Edison's  Electric  Light. 


Entertaining   ^/\necdotes. 

INCLUDING 

Anecdotes  of  Noted  Persons,  Amusing  Stories,  Animal 
Stories,  Love  Stories,  Falling  Leaves. 

FROM  EVERY  AVAILABLE  SOURCE. 

"  THAT  REMINDS  ME  OF  A  STORY." 

Edited  by  J.  B.  McCLURE. 

8  vo.  256  pages — Handsomely  Illustrated.  Price,  in  cloth,  fine,  $1.00 
Paper  cover,  50  cents.     Sent  by  mail  post-paid  on  receipt  of  price 

RHODES  &  McCLURE,  Publishers, 

METHODIST  CHURCH  BLOCK,  CHICAGO. 

Daniel  Webster  and  the  Farmer. 

{From  "Entertaining  Anecdotes .") 

Webster  was  out  one  day  on  the  Marshes  near  Marshfield,  busily  shooting 
birds.  It  was  a  hot  afternoon  in  August.  The  farmers  were  getting  their 
salt  hay  on  the  marshes: 

He  came,  in  the  course  of  his  rambles,  to  the  Green  Harbor  River,  which 
he  wished  to  cross.  He  beckoned  to  one  of  the  men  on  the  opposite  bank  to 
take  him  over  in  his  boat,  which  lay  moored  in  sight.  The  man  at  once  left 
his  work  came  over,  and  paddled  Mr.  Webster  across  the  stream.  He  de- 
clined the  payment  offered  him,  but  lingered  a  moment,  with  Yankee  curios- 
ity, to  question  the  stranger,  He  surmised  who  Mr.  Webster  was,  and  with 
some  hesitation  remarked: 

"This  is  Daniel  Webster,  I  believe,"  v 

"That  is  my  name,"  replied  the  sportsman. 

"Well,  now,"  said  the  farmer,  "I  am  told  you  can  make  from  three  to 
€ve  dollars  a  day,  pleading  cases  up  in  Boston." 

Mr.  Webster  replied  that  he  was  sometimes  so  fortunate  as  to  receive  that 
amount  for  his  services. 

"Well,  now,"  returned  the  rustic,  "it  seems  to  me,  I  declare,  if  I  could  get 
as  much  in  the  city  pleadin'  law-cases,  I  would  not  be  a-wadin'  over  these 
marshes  this  hot  weather,  shootin'  little  birds." 


'?^£g££al65n5 


wmsr* 


The  Huntsman. 


PTFTIETIX    THOUSAND. 

MOODY'S  ANECDOTES 

AND 

ILLUSTRATIONS. 

Compiled  by  REV.  J.  B.  McCLURE,  Chicago. 

Comprising  all  of  Mr.  Moody's  Anecdotes  and  Illustrations  used  by  him  inhi» 
revival  work  in  Europe  and  America,  including  his  recent  work  in  Boston. 
Also,  Engravings  of  Messrs.  Moody,  Sankey,  Whittle  and  Bliss, 
•  Moody's  Church,  Chicago  Tabernacle,  Farwell  Hall,  etc. 


OPINIONS  OF  THE  PRESS  AND  EMINENT  DIVINES : 

"  The  wonderful  sale  of  '  Moody's  Anecdotes,'  compiled  by  the  Rev.  J.  B.  McOlure, 
of  Chicago,  is  the  best  evidence  of  the  great  value  of  this  popular  book.  Thirty-four 
thousand  copies  have  already  been  issued,  reaching  the  seventh  edition  in  three 
months.  This  is,  perhaps,  unparalleled  in  the  history  of  Western  literature ;  at  least 
we  know  of  no  library  book  that  has  met  with  so  large  a  sale  in  so  short  a  time.  II 
bids  fair  to  sell  right  along,  until  everybody  is  supplied  with  a  copy."— St.  Louis  Evangelist 

'"Moody's  Anecdotes'  is  a  handsome  and  handy  volume,  which  many  will  prize 
as  highly  characteristic  of  the  great  Evangelist.  Throughout  its  two  hundred  pages  the 
truth  is  keenly  applied  by  the  aids  of  wit  and  a  peculiarly  vivid  and  pictorial  pathos."* 
— New  York  Evangelist. 

"  The  book  is  handsomely  printed  and  well  compiled  as  to  matter.  It  contains  the 
pith  of  Moody's  theology,  methods  and  eloquence,  and  consists  of  a  selection  of  the 
great  preaeher's  best  stories,  drawn  from  his  personal  experience.  It  is  a  good  insight 
into  the  workings  and  teachings  of  the  great  Evangelist  and  Christian  Preacher."— 
New  Orleans  Daily  Democrat. 

"The  incidents  are  related  in  character— it  is  Mr.  Moody  that  speaks.  They  are 
short,  pointed,  peculiarly  apt,  as  are  all  the  illustrations  of  the  Evangelist  They  form 
the  arrows  of  the  great  marksman,  and  have  done  much  of  the  execution  of  his  ser- 
mons. "—Zion's  Herald  (Boston). 

"A  book  of  anecdotes  which  have  thrilled  hundreds  of  thousands.  During 
the  last  three  months  thirty-four  thousand  copies  have  been  issued.  Mr.  McClure  has 
done  a  good  work  in  preparing  this  volume,  which  we  commend  to  ministers,  Sabbath- 
school  workers  and  parents."— Presbyterian  Banner  (Pittsburg). 

"It  comprises  the  most  striking  stories,  told  in  Mr.  Moody's  well-known  concise  and 
graphic  style,  and  arranged  in  alphabetical  order,  according  to  the  theme  illustrated  or 
set  forth  in  the  anecdote.  The  book  has  been  compiled  by  Rev.  J.  B.  McClure,  whose 
scholarship  and  journalistic  experience  perfectly  fit  him  to  do  the  work  discrim- 
inatingly and  well."— N.  W.  Christian  Advocate  (Methodist). 

"The  book  is  handsomely  printed,  the  matter  is  well  classified,  and  will  form  an 
uncommonly  interesting  book.  A  capital  book  for  the  Sundav-school."— Advance  (Con- 
gregational). 

"  Contains  the  pith  of  Moody's  theology,  methods  and  eloquence,  all  in  one,  and 
will  be  found  agreeable  for  home  reading  and  useful  to  the  Sunday-school  teacher  and 
minister."— Interior  (Presbyterian) 

"Excellent  reading,  and  by  their  brevity  and  point  will  be  found  especially  good 
for  that  occasional  and,  perhaps,  hastv  reading,  which  is  all  that  many  persons  can 
hope  to  find  opportunity  for."— Standard  (Baptist). 

"  It  is  an  attractive  volume,  including  all  the  really  interesting  matter  of  Mr. 
Moody's  discourses.  A  very  valuable  publication ;  is  selling  rapidly."— Chicago  Evening 
Journal 

Price  in  Cloth,  Fine,  $1.00.     Paper  Cover,  50  cts. 

RHODES  &  McCLURE,  Publishers,  Chicago. 


DATE    DUE 

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GAYLORD 

PRINTED  IN  U.S.A.      1 

